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Date: Thu, 04 Sep 2025 15:48:47 +0200
To: Rob Landers <rob@bottled.codes>
Cc: Larry Garfield <larry@garfieldtech.com>, php internals
 <internals@lists.php.net>
Subject: Re: [PHP-DEV] [RFC] Clarify discussion and voting period rules
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From: tim@bastelstu.be (=?UTF-8?Q?Tim_D=C3=BCsterhus?=)

Hi

Am 2025-09-04 00:07, schrieb Rob Landers:
> I’m still trying to understand the problem this language is solving, 
> can you help me out here? It is incredibly precise and detailed, but 
> gets into over-specification, IMHO. Traditionally, PHP policy has 
> leaned towards principle and illustrative examples over exact 
> prescriptions. Is this intended to shift away from that approach?

The language is trying to solve ambiguity. The current phrasing of the 
policy is full of words like “maybe”, “might”, “should”, which leave 
room for interpretation. As I have mentioned in my reply to Thomas, a 
(formal) policy is intended to to allow cut discussion short in cases of 
disagreement by allowing someone to point towards the policy and say: 
“The policy we agreed on *clearly* specifies that X, but this rule was 
violated. I object with proceeding until this violation is resolved.”. 
It should not possible for the other side to “well actually it could 
also mean Y”, because they disagree. As an example the current policy 
states:

> There'd be a minimum of 2 weeks between when an RFC that touches the 
> language is brought up on this list and when it's voted on is required. 
> Other RFCs might use a smaller timeframe, but it should be at least a 
> week.

Specifically “Other RFCs” (i.e. RFCs that do not touch the language, 
which is not actually defined) “might” (this probably should read “may”) 
use a “smaller timeframe” that “should be at least a week” (i.e. it may 
also be 2 hours). In other words, that policy is completely useless to 
resolve any cases of disagreement, since it allows basically anything.

> Further, how will this be enforced? Currently, if I understand 
> correctly, this is generally enforced by the CoC and it doesn’t seem 
> equipped to deal with "your vote ended 1 hour too early" type 
> situations.

This is a good point that indeed should be written down in some way. I 
generally expect everyone to act in good faith, i.e. to only violate the 
policy by accident and to immediately remediate any issues once made 
aware of the mistake. Violations of the cooldown period should generally 
be recognized when pre-announcing the vote and the RFC author should 
then acknowledge the violation in a reply, wait a little more and then 
pre-announce the vote at a later point. Violations of the 
pre-announcement period should be recognized when starting the vote and 
the RFC author should then acknowledge the violation, cancel the vote 
and restart it after a new pre-announcement (with a new title to clear 
out any votes). The Wiki tracks the time of voting, so any votes cast 
after the voting period has ended would be ignored (which would only 
really matter in cases of close votes).

If the RFC author follows through with a vote, despite being in 
violation of the rules and being made aware of it, the result of the 
vote would be void. I'd say that if no one points out the violation 
after a “reasonable period of time” has passed, the violation is 
considered to not have occurred (i.e. it should not be possible to void 
a vote at day 13 of the voting period).

Best regards
Tim Düsterhus