Newsgroups: php.internals
Path: news.php.net
Xref: news.php.net php.internals:90539
Mailing-List: contact internals-help@lists.php.net; run by ezmlm
Received-SPF: unknown (pb1.pair.com: domain dennis.birkholz.biz does not designate 144.76.185.252 as permitted sender)
To: internals@lists.php.net
References: <5690BCE6.6010908@gmail.com> <A1.30.14657.27961965@pb1.pair.com>
 <569182FD.6070404@gmail.com>
 <CAAyV7nHBVZitqAi=S_TN60Hb9XckncLoc4xe-K27pmxsPRQ7Yg@mail.gmail.com>
 <56918458.1070101@gmail.com>
 <CAEZPtU4tMsG0fsV2sL-Shc5Q4hTjr13wNLobZj0ASm=fuSXSHQ@mail.gmail.com>
 <5691D2EA.1050808@gmail.com> <5692307D.5050900@lsces.co.uk>
 <56925977.1040801@dennis.birkholz.biz> <5693C027.4070804@eliw.com>
Message-ID: <5694D270.3050109@dennis.birkholz.biz>
Date: Tue, 12 Jan 2016 11:16:16 +0100
User-Agent: Mozilla/5.0 (X11; Linux x86_64; rv:38.0) Gecko/20100101
 Icedove/38.5.0
MIME-Version: 1.0
In-Reply-To: <5693C027.4070804@eliw.com>
Content-Type: text/plain; charset=utf-8; format=flowed
Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit
Subject: Re: [PHP-DEV] Re: Anonymous voting on wiki
From: php@dennis.birkholz.biz (Dennis Birkholz)

Hi Eli,

Am 11.01.2016 um 15:45 schrieb Eli:
> On 1/10/16 8:15 AM, Dennis Birkholz wrote:
>> I would really like to understand the rational behind anonymous voting
>> in the PHP internals context. Votes for RFCs should be purely based on
>> technical reasons and whether the language change would benefit the
>> language in the long run or not. I see no reason why such a vote
>> should be confidential.
>
> I will chime in my quick thoughts here Dennis, as to a reason I could
> see for doing so ...  (Not going to argue if 'this reason is good
> enough' or not.  But it is a valid reason)
>
>> If a person does not stand behind his/her opinion for a technical
>> change, I am not sure if that person should be allowed to decide the
>> future of the language.
>
> So the reason is not because someone isn't willing to 'stand behind
> their opinion'.  It's purely about being harassed (perhaps beleaguered
> is a better terminology to not confuse this with 'illegal harassment')
> for having said opinion.  I was one of the people who, due to my vote on
> STH, immediately started being beleaguered for holding my views and for
> voting as much.  My inbox/twitter/IRC/etc filled with how I was ruining
> PHP and ruining people's lives.  Old friendships were threatened to be
> ended.  And my entire week ended up becoming full of responding to these.
>
> Instead of getting to be an informed voter, go in and cast my vote, and
> await for the results to be displayed ... I become embroiled into the
> arguments, back-n-forth, defense, and dealing with the beleaguering
> comments.
>
> Yes, I stood behind my opinion.   But it has made me gun shy about
> voting in the future on any contentious topic, because I know I need to
> set aside the time to 'deal with that'.  Yet those contentious topics,
> are the ones where we should be encouraging as many people as possible
> to vote, to make sure that we have a broad spectrum of views and that it
> is the 'will of the community' as it were.   And (at least in the US) is
> against the idea in general of voter confidence.  Where you are free to
> hold your belief without needing to be slammed for it publicly.

I don't think voting on an RFC is like electing your government. I would 
compare it to how a House of Representatives works. And at least here in 
Germany, they vote publicly except when electing people (e.g. the 
Chancellor).

> So anyway, that's one reason.  Whether it's a good reason or not is up
> to others to decide.
>
>> ... But it may be preferable to hide the Person<->Vote table until the
>> vote is over. That would provide protection against harassment to win
>> someone over and change his/her vote.
>
> Unfortunately that won't stop the above situation.  While it would stop
> the idea of campaigning someone to change their vote (which is perhaps
> another reason to do it).  It just means all the above issues would be
> taking place post-vote, instead of during-vote.

I think a CoC or something similar should clearly state that this is 
unacceptable behavior and we all expect that all disagreement is 
expressed on the mailinglist in the discussion thread only in a 
respectful way and that closed votes mark the end of such discussions 
(besides actual implementation details of course).

Greets
Dennis