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Date: Mon, 14 Jan 2008 23:12:50 -0800
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Subject: Re: [PHP-DEV] voting
From: ron@Opus1.COM (Ronald Chmara)

On Jan 13, 2008, at 5:58 PM, Stanislav Malyshev wrote:
>>> Voting to achieve what?
>> Fair decisions in a simpler, effective and right manner (and not
>> discutable, ideally).
>
> I do not consider "fairness", whatever that could mean, having  
> anything to do with technical decisions regarding PHP,

I vote that PHP should get a pony! Who's with me!

Voting is good in that it helps express the wills and desires *of  
those who vote*. Some of those opinions may be wrong, insane, or  
silly, but it provides a means to evaluate an opinion professed by a  
group, rather than as an individual.

IMSHO, for PHP, voting is an *informative*, not *conformative*, process.

Let's take two arguments, with different heritages, authors, and  
origins.

Suoshin patches.
mysql_session patches.

We could have 100% voted desire to make all of these HEAD, and still  
say "No."

Voting expresses voter *will*, not outcome. For the former and  
latter, these are feature, not technical, requests.

> neither I think counting votes is the process that allows to arrive  
> to a decision best for PHP.

That's why votes influence, but do not determine, outcomes.

> I personally know very little about some areas of PHP code,

It's a big club. We should get T-shirts.

> and it make little sense that my vote would carry the same weight  
> as opinion of the person that wrote and maintains the code. There's  
> nothing in arithmetic majority of people that makes any decision  
> better, more effective, more right and not disputable. Thousands of  
> people can be wrong as easy as one person can be, and one person  
> can be as right as a thousand.

True, that.

For those not versed in US-style democracy, the way we do it here is  
to elect (theoretically) somebody with a clue. Their one "clue"  
easily vote trumps thousands.

The thing is, is that, well, if Rasmus, Zeev, Andi, Wez, *whoever*  
has a big voice, stopped listening or went insane or *whatever*, we  
have to have a way of fixing such a case.

> Also, vast majority of PHP users never read this list and would  
> know nothing of any votes held or announced here, so representing  
> that as a poll reflecting opinion of a millions-wide PHP community  
> makes no sense whatsoever.

Agreed.

-Ronabop