[RFC][Discuss] Increase non-syntax runtime-impacting RFC voting threshold to 60%

https://wiki.php.net/rfc/rfc.voting-threshold

This topic has come up on the mailing list a few times, so I'd like to
formally open the topic for discussion.

I'm generally pretty liberal when it comes to allowing the PHP
language to evolve and explore its identity, but the truth is a
feature that has 30 people vote against it and 31 people vote in favor
of it is not a mandate by any stretch of the imagination. It's an
opportunity to examine why a divide exists and if we're all being
honest with each other, improve the original idea before it becomes a
maintenance burden.

Thanks for taking the initiative on this!

FTR: Zeev has also started preparing an RFC which includes this voting
threshold, besides further issues: https://wiki.php.net/rfc/voting2017.

Please note the "Open Question". I'm not all that sure 60% is enough
of a mandate either, but I wanted to be conservative in my
conservatism. If folks think 2/3 is more appropriate (and consistent
with syntax changes), I'm happy to change this number before we move
to voting phase.

IMHO, a 2/3 majority would be most suitable for any changes to php-src.
Most votes have even been clearer, and I believe most (if not all) which
would have failed a 2/3 threshold would have failed 60% as well. (Zeev
presented more detailed stats on this list a while ago.) Having a 2/3
threshold for all php-src change related votes would at least avoid the
discussion into which category the vote falls, though.

--
Christoph M. Becker

https://wiki.php.net/rfc/rfc.voting-threshold

This topic has come up on the mailing list a few times, so I'd like to
formally open the topic for discussion.

I'm generally pretty liberal when it comes to allowing the PHP
language to evolve and explore its identity, but the truth is a
feature that has 30 people vote against it and 31 people vote in favor
of it is not a mandate by any stretch of the imagination. It's an
opportunity to examine why a divide exists and if we're all being
honest with each other, improve the original idea before it becomes a
maintenance burden.

Please note the "Open Question". I'm not all that sure 60% is enough
of a mandate either, but I wanted to be conservative in my
conservatism. If folks think 2/3 is more appropriate (and consistent
with syntax changes), I'm happy to change this number before we move
to voting phase.

-Sara

Or, as Ze'ev once famously said, "Give the language a rest".

+1 on this, though I would strongly recommend to use a 2/3 threshold for
all RFCs, be they language, library or procedural. We're having this
discussion on nearly every single RFC (seriously, even the UUID RFC which
is as non-language as these things get had arguments about this) and this
would be a good chance to simplify the rules.

I would also explicitly note that the voting threshold applies to the
primary RFC vote only, while secondary votes are simple majority votes.

Nikita

Le 13/09/2017 à 22:42, Sara Golemon a écrit :

https://wiki.php.net/rfc/rfc.voting-threshold

This topic has come up on the mailing list a few times, so I'd like to
formally open the topic for discussion.

I'm generally pretty liberal when it comes to allowing the PHP
language to evolve and explore its identity, but the truth is a
feature that has 30 people vote against it and 31 people vote in favor
of it is not a mandate by any stretch of the imagination.

+1, such result show we fail to have a good consensus,
and that ~50% will be unhappy.

So indeed, having a higher threshold seems a good idea.

Remi

It's an
opportunity to examine why a divide exists and if we're all being
honest with each other, improve the original idea before it becomes a
maintenance burden.

Please note the "Open Question". I'm not all that sure 60% is enough
of a mandate either, but I wanted to be conservative in my
conservatism. If folks think 2/3 is more appropriate (and consistent
with syntax changes), I'm happy to change this number before we move
to voting phase.

-Sara

Or, as Ze'ev once famously said, "Give the language a rest".

-----Original Message-----
From: Christoph M. Becker [mailto:cmbecker69@gmx.de]
Sent: Thursday, September 14, 2017 12:25 AM
To: Sara Golemon <pollita@php.netmailto:pollita@php.net>; PHP internals <internals@lists.php.netmailto:internals@lists.php.net>
Subject: [PHP-DEV] Re: [RFC][Discuss] Increase non-syntax runtime-impacting
RFC votingthreshold to 60%

FTR: Zeev has also started preparing an RFC which includes this voting
threshold, besides further issues: https://wiki.php.net/rfc/voting2017.

Oh wow, I was hoping to bake it for a while longer before public scrutiny :)

If you want to hide changes from https://wiki.php.net/feed.php, you
have to mark them as "Minor Changes" (right below the "Edit summary").

I'm not into hiding, it's not confidential, just wasn't quite ready for the spotlight just yet, especially as I won't be around to discuss it for over a month :)

I didn't want to bring it into the spotlight – I just wanted to avoid
having two partially overlapping RFCs going unnoticed by the respective
authors. That's also why I've snipped most parts of your previous
reply, even though I'd have to say something about it. :)

--
Christoph M. Becker