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Date: Mon, 5 Aug 2019 14:33:53 +0100
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Subject: Improve visibility of RFC negative feedback
From: Danack@basereality.com (Dan Ackroyd)

So, recently there was some discussion about RFCs that have passed
despite there being some strong objections to them.

I think there is a fundamental problem that could be addressed here,
in that the arguments 'for' an RFC have much higher visibility than
the arguments 'against' an RFC. The RFC page, which presents the
arguments for an RFC, is a link that is emailed round and can be
linked to from other sites. The arguments against an RFC are contained
only within an internals email thread. Not only is it much more
difficult for people to discover these, as there are part of an email
thread they might not be written as concisely and as clearly as they
could be.

That sounds like an uneven balance of power which tips the balance
towards RFCs passing. I think we could balance this by doing something
similar to the following:

# Proposal - improve visibility of negative feedback

When someone creates an RFC, near the top of that page they should
create a link to a separate page that will contain negative feedback.
People other that the RFC author are free to put whatever negative
feedback think is appropriate on that 'negative feedback' page.

In the (hopefully) rare cases where the people providing negative
feedback can't agree on how that page should be formatted, they may
create a new negative feedback page and also put a link to it on the
actual RFC page, next to the other 'negative feedback' link.

To indicate agreement with any negative feedback, people are free to
put their own name (not other peoples names) as a signature after the
relevant 'negative feedback' link.

Changing the process to add more visibility to negative feedback with
something like the above wouldn't add much burden to the RFC process,
and could improve the outcomes in some cases.


# Proposal - set a standard text to used when announcing voting

When the vote is opened, and the announcement is made we should have
some standard text to be used to remind people to read the dissenting
feedback. i.e. something like:

 "Voters are reminded to please read all feedback given. If some
feedback hasn't been addressed by the RFC, and has to be added by
someone other than the RFC author, voters should read that dissenting
feedback, and weigh that in whether to vote in favour of the RFC or
not."


## Reasons for not putting the negative feedback on the same page as the RFC

Putting the negative feedback on the same page as the RFC would have
problems with multiple people editing one document and possibly not
agreeing on the formatting.

It could also have problems in making the RFC harder to read, if for
example someone decides to write 20,000 words on why an RFC is bad,
that would make it more difficult to read the RFC.

## Reasons for signing negative feedback

If people similar to the people who were kicked off the internals list
for being too negative want to write some negative feedback, they're
free to do that, and then other people free to not put much value on
that.

If people who have more weight in the community are giving feedback,
and they all object strongly enough to sign their name, then it
behooves everyone to read that feedback.

As a side benefit, I think this would also help the 'discussion only
starting when the voting is opened' problem, as it would allow people
to indicate how they are going to vote.

## Why not just enforce the current RFC rule.

So we apparently already have a rule that says:

https://wiki.php.net/rfc/howto

> Listen to the feedback, and try to answer/resolve all questions. Update
> your RFC to document all the issues and discussions. Cover both the
> positive and negative arguments. Put the RFC URL into all your replies.

I think one of the reasons no-one is doing that is that it's just too much work.

It's also just not possible to summarise some of the arguments in a
neutral way, and instead if the RFC author attempts to summarise the
negative arguments, it would provoke heated arguments.

Changing the responsibility of documenting the negative feedback from
the RFC author to people saying that negative feedback, would mean:

* it's more likely to be done.
* it doesn't add to the work needed to be done by an RFC author.
* it avoids heated debate about whether some feedback is relevant or not.

In addition, this proposal make it clear and straight-forward for
people who wish to leave negative feedback what to do if the RFC
author forgets to create the page for negative feedback (create it
themselves), rather than trying to force the RFC author to do more
work.

Any thoughts before I spend the time to write this as an RFC?

cheers
Dan
Ack