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Date: Fri, 11 Jan 2008 09:40:25 +0100
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Subject: dare I say governance (was: Re: [PHP-DEV] no read-only, no moderation, just a simple self-enforced checklist)
From: mls@pooteeweet.org (Lukas Kahwe Smith)


On Jan 11, 2008, at 12:43 AM, Stanislav Malyshev wrote:

>> At the very least, some kind of centralized RFC tracker (like PEAR's
>> PEPr for package proposals) would be a potential way to track  
>> features
>
> Maybe just for the start create a wiki or something that people  
> could put their RFCs to and edit them, and then hopefully somebody  
> would step up to manage that wiki, etc.? You can also attach files  
> to wiki, so it might work.

I also doubt that we will adopt some other organizations governance  
toolchain. However to me the main issue ia that we have a lot of  
proposals, a lot of new guys (some of them are also involved in core  
development, others are just lurkers turned posters) and our  
discussion style does not seem to scale. Instead we are stuck in a  
vicious circle that seems to cause even more posts with even less  
content, which invites even more lurkers to turn posters (not that  
participation is a bad thing in general, but it seems our new relevant  
content per post ratio is going down hill insanely fast).

With that in mind I would appreciate 3 things:

1) Find a system that encourages thoughtful content addition over  
diatribes
2) A way to summarize the issue at hand and key opinions
3) Some way to register votes so that the votes can be associated to  
php.net karma

As such I think the idea of having someone write up a summary of the  
initial proposal in a wiki is not too much to ask. This wiki page  
should then be updated with information as the discussion progresses.  
Ideally by the original author, others should get the opportunity to  
add comments, which should then get folded into the main text. People  
posting on the relevant threads are expected to keep themselves  
uptodate as to whats written on the wiki so that they can complain if  
the summary is wrong and so that they also refrain from reposting  
already discussed points. So this covers 2) fairly well.

For 1) I think it comes down to discipline. People that do not follow  
the process described in the previous paragraph should just get their  
fingers slapped. Ideally off list. If we stick to this process,  
newbies will soon learn how the list works and we will turn around  
this vicious circle.

Finally for 3) it would be nice if the final votes get dumped on the  
wiki, although an email based interface would probably be necessary to  
make the likes of Rasmus happy. Obviously end user opinion counts to  
the development of PHP, but in the end its the core developers that  
will write and maintain the code. As the numbers of core developers is  
growing (or just shifting to new names/faces), it becomes increasingly  
hard to keep track of who is actually a core developer and who isnt.  
If the votes go through some kind of system, such meta information  
could easily be added to the votes.

Such a process is still very lightweight, leaves a lot of room for  
flexibility and might still go a long way. The dangerous aspect is  
that it somewhat relies on discipline (without discipline you sort of  
forgo the chance at flexibility if you want to stay productive).

regards,
Lukas