Hey there!
When I try to look into the discussions of older RFCs to find out why they ended up the way they did, it’s not easy. You hardly can find them. This is because they are often not referenced in the RFC itself.
Going forward, would it make sense to make it mandatory to reference '[Discussion]' and '[Vote]' in the RFC text itself?
Cheers
Nick
Hey there!
When I try to look into the discussions of older RFCs to find out why
they ended up the way they did, it’s not easy. You hardly can find
them. This is because they are often not referenced in the RFC itself.Going forward, would it make sense to make it mandatory to reference
'[Discussion]' and '[Vote]' in the RFC text itself?Cheers
Nick
FYI I can usually find most RFC discussions by searching on
https://externals.io for the RFC title
To be clear, I would also still encourage RFC authors to add discussion
and vote thread links to RFCs. I think it helps people who are not
familiar with the RFC process when RFCs are linked outside of the list,
such as on Reddit or social media. I'll often add a comment to RFC posts
on r/php to link the discussion threads so people can follow the list
discussion.
Also, some discussions are harder to find when there's many other list
discussions that mention the same keywords as the RFC title.
Thought: This could potentially be automated with a script that looks
for list emails with a RFC link in the body. If the email body contains
a RFC link, the subject contains the RFC title and either [Discussion]
or [Vote], then add a reference to the linked RFC wiki page.
Hi
Am 2025-09-01 12:28, schrieb Nick:
When I try to look into the discussions of older RFCs to find out why
they ended up the way they did, it’s not easy. You hardly can find
them. This is because they are often not referenced in the RFC itself.Going forward, would it make sense to make it mandatory to reference
'[Discussion]' and '[Vote]' in the RFC text itself?
I was having troubles finding the corresponding discussion thread for
some RFCs myself before (and regretfully did not always add the links to
the list archives myself to my own RFCs). I think this makes sense and
I'm happy to include this requirement as part of my current “Clarify
discussion and voting period rules” RFC. Would you mind sending another
email to the discussion thread of that one to have it all in a single
location: https://news-web.php.net/php.internals/128594?
Best regards
Tim Düsterhus
When I try to look into the discussions of older RFCs to find out why they ended up the way they did, it’s not easy. You hardly can find them. This is because they are often not referenced in the RFC itself.
Going forward, would it make sense to make it mandatory to reference '[Discussion]' and '[Vote]' in the RFC text itself?
Well, the RFC template has a "Reference" section which says:
| Links to external references, discussions, or RFCs.
In my opinion, that is a perfect place to add these links. Of course,
someone needs to actually add this information.
Christoph