Voting irregularities

9 years ago by Michael Wallner — view source

unread

All,

I ran some numbers on the current votes of the dual-mode vote right
now. There were a number of voters that I didn't recognize. So I
decided to pull some stats.

The following voters never voted before the dual-mode RFC went up:

dom - no
eliw - no
kguest - yes
kk - no
nohn - no
oliver - yes
richsage - yes
sammywg - no
spriebsch - no
srain - no
theseer - no
zimt - no

Some of these names I recognize from list (sammywg and eliw), but many I do not.

The interesting thing happens when you look at the voting direction.

Currently, the RFC is slightly losing 70:37 (65.4%).

If we look at percentages, 4.2% of yes voters have never voted in a
prior RFC. But a whopping 24.3% of no voters have never voted before.

If we adjust the votes to remove these "never voted" accounts, it
stands at 67:28. Which is 70.5%. Which is basically where the vote was
prior to the competing RFC opening.

I'm not saying that all of these are bad votes. Nor that they
shouldn't be counted. I think it does raise a significant question
around the voting practices.

Something that I think we need to discuss as a group.

So consider that discussion open.

Jeez, that is becoming ridiculous. So, if you’re that good in counting, how many did not vote before STHv0.3?

9 years ago by Levi Morrison — view source

unread

All,

I ran some numbers on the current votes of the dual-mode vote right
now. There were a number of voters that I didn't recognize. So I
decided to pull some stats.

The following voters never voted before the dual-mode RFC went up:

dom - no
eliw - no
kguest - yes
kk - no
nohn - no
oliver - yes
richsage - yes
sammywg - no
spriebsch - no
srain - no
theseer - no
zimt - no

Some of these names I recognize from list (sammywg and eliw), but many I do not.

The interesting thing happens when you look at the voting direction.

Currently, the RFC is slightly losing 70:37 (65.4%).

If we look at percentages, 4.2% of yes voters have never voted in a
prior RFC. But a whopping 24.3% of no voters have never voted before.

If we adjust the votes to remove these "never voted" accounts, it
stands at 67:28. Which is 70.5%. Which is basically where the vote was
prior to the competing RFC opening.

I'm not saying that all of these are bad votes. Nor that they
shouldn't be counted. I think it does raise a significant question
around the voting practices.

Something that I think we need to discuss as a group.

So consider that discussion open.

Jeez, that is becoming ridiculous. So, if you’re that good in counting, how many did not vote before STHv0.3?

Is there a way to check when someone got a php.net account/karma?

9 years ago by Michael Wallner — view source

unread

All,

I ran some numbers on the current votes of the dual-mode vote right
now. There were a number of voters that I didn't recognize. So I
decided to pull some stats.

The following voters never voted before the dual-mode RFC went up:

dom - no
eliw - no
kguest - yes
kk - no
nohn - no
oliver - yes
richsage - yes
sammywg - no
spriebsch - no
srain - no
theseer - no
zimt - no

Some of these names I recognize from list (sammywg and eliw), but many I do not.

The interesting thing happens when you look at the voting direction.

Currently, the RFC is slightly losing 70:37 (65.4%).

If we look at percentages, 4.2% of yes voters have never voted in a
prior RFC. But a whopping 24.3% of no voters have never voted before.

If we adjust the votes to remove these "never voted" accounts, it
stands at 67:28. Which is 70.5%. Which is basically where the vote was
prior to the competing RFC opening.

I'm not saying that all of these are bad votes. Nor that they
shouldn't be counted. I think it does raise a significant question
around the voting practices.

Something that I think we need to discuss as a group.

So consider that discussion open.

Jeez, that is becoming ridiculous. So, if you’re that good in counting, how many did not vote before STHv0.3?

Is there a way to check when someone got a php.net account/karma?

http://people.php.net <http://people.php.net/

9 years ago by Levi Morrison — view source

unread

All,

I ran some numbers on the current votes of the dual-mode vote right
now. There were a number of voters that I didn't recognize. So I
decided to pull some stats.

The following voters never voted before the dual-mode RFC went up:

dom - no
eliw - no
kguest - yes
kk - no
nohn - no
oliver - yes
richsage - yes
sammywg - no
spriebsch - no
srain - no
theseer - no
zimt - no

Some of these names I recognize from list (sammywg and eliw), but many I do
not.

The interesting thing happens when you look at the voting direction.

Currently, the RFC is slightly losing 70:37 (65.4%).

If we look at percentages, 4.2% of yes voters have never voted in a
prior RFC. But a whopping 24.3% of no voters have never voted before.

If we adjust the votes to remove these "never voted" accounts, it
stands at 67:28. Which is 70.5%. Which is basically where the vote was
prior to the competing RFC opening.

I'm not saying that all of these are bad votes. Nor that they
shouldn't be counted. I think it does raise a significant question
around the voting practices.

Something that I think we need to discuss as a group.

So consider that discussion open.

Jeez, that is becoming ridiculous. So, if you’re that good in counting, how
many did not vote before STHv0.3?

Is there a way to check when someone got a php.net account/karma?

http://people.php.net

I am aware of this, but unless I just missed it that site doesn't show
when they got an account.

9 years ago by Michael Wallner — view source

unread

Is there a way to check when someone got a php.net account/karma?

http://people.php.net

I am aware of this, but unless I just missed it that site doesn't show
when they got an account.

Oh, sorry! I thought it reads something like “Account opened: Y-m-d” but that’s on the PECL site.

9 years ago by Zeev Suraski — view source

unread

I am aware of this, but unless I just missed it that site doesn't show
when they got an account.

None of these accounts are recent as far as I can tell from my email
archive. For the record, with the exception of Eli - with whom I discussed
the reasons he voted against the Coercive RFC - I haven’t spoken with any of
them and doubt anybody else did (not that it would have been forbidden if I
or someone else did).
Florian (IMHO obvious) explanation is the correct one. Take spriebsch for
example - a very prominent figure in the PHP community, hardly a newcomer -
and I guess it's the first time he finds something that's sufficiently
important for him to vote on. We should really stop with the ridiculous &
offensive conspiracy theories.

Zeev

9 years ago by Philip Sturgeon — view source

unread

I am aware of this, but unless I just missed it that site doesn't show
when they got an account.

None of these accounts are recent as far as I can tell from my email
archive. For the record, with the exception of Eli - with whom I discussed
the reasons he voted against the Coercive RFC - I haven’t spoken with any of
them and doubt anybody else did (not that it would have been forbidden if I
or someone else did).
Florian (IMHO obvious) explanation is the correct one. Take spriebsch for
example - a very prominent figure in the PHP community, hardly a newcomer -
and I guess it's the first time he finds something that's sufficiently
important for him to vote on. We should really stop with the ridiculous &
offensive conspiracy theories.

Zeev

--

Literally nothing Anthony said was ridiculous or a conspiracy theory.

9 years ago by Zeev Suraski — view source

unread

-----Original Message-----
From: Philip Sturgeon [mailto:pjsturgeon@gmail.com]
Sent: Sunday, March 15, 2015 6:31 PM
To: Zeev Suraski
Cc: Levi Morrison; Michael Wallner; internals@lists.php.net
Subject: Re: [PHP-DEV] Voting irregularities

Literally nothing Anthony said was ridiculous or a conspiracy theory.

Phil,

I disagree. 'New' voters voting sharply in favor of No strongly implies
some sort of foul play. Why break it down otherwise? "I'm not saying that
all of these votes are bad" is equivalent to saying "I am saying that some
of these votes are bad". It's further strengthened by providing numbers of
where this RFC would be at if these votes were discounted, as if it's on the
table (that, I would argue, is the ridiculous part). Also, it really
doesn't matter what you or I think about it. What matters is what everyone
thinks about it. We already have one person understanding this email as a
reason to look into when these accounts were created, and judging from the
Twitter messages, he's not alone in suspecting some sort of foul play.

I absolutely do think we should revisit our voting practices, but absolutely
not in the context of a specific RFC, and not mid-flight. The quiet period
after PHP 7's RFCs close could be an appropriate time for that.

Zeev

9 years ago by Maciej Sobaczewski — view source

unread

I am aware of this, but unless I just missed it that site doesn't show
when they got an account.

As you already said, there's no acceptation date on that site, but it
seems that new accounts are appended to the end of the list -
http://people.php.net/?page=33
Probably better than nothing...

9 years ago by Peter Cowburn — view source

unread

All,

I ran some numbers on the current votes of the dual-mode vote right
now. There were a number of voters that I didn't recognize. So I
decided to pull some stats.

The following voters never voted before the dual-mode RFC went up:

dom - no
eliw - no
kguest - yes
kk - no
nohn - no
oliver - yes
richsage - yes
sammywg - no
spriebsch - no
srain - no
theseer - no
zimt - no

Some of these names I recognize from list (sammywg and eliw), but many
I do not.

The interesting thing happens when you look at the voting direction.

Currently, the RFC is slightly losing 70:37 (65.4%).

If we look at percentages, 4.2% of yes voters have never voted in a
prior RFC. But a whopping 24.3% of no voters have never voted before.

If we adjust the votes to remove these "never voted" accounts, it
stands at 67:28. Which is 70.5%. Which is basically where the vote was
prior to the competing RFC opening.

Extra! Extra! Read all about it: voters come out of the woodwork to vote on
contentious issues!

(Sorry, just poking fun...)

I'm not saying that all of these are bad votes. Nor that they
shouldn't be counted. I think it does raise a significant question
around the voting practices.

Something that I think we need to discuss as a group.

So consider that discussion open.

Jeez, that is becoming ridiculous. So, if you’re that good in counting,
how many did not vote before STHv0.3?

Is there a way to check when someone got a php.net account/karma?

The user page [1] on master.php.net shows when they applied for an account
(and sometimes other notes), which is generally roughly the same time as
getting an account within days/weeks.

[1] E.g. https://master.php.net/manage/users.php?username=salathe
(accessible only to folks with @php.net accounts)

9 years ago by padraic.brady@gmail.com — view source

unread

Hi Michael,

Jeez, that is becoming ridiculous. So, if you’re that good in counting, how many did not vote before STHv0.3?

I don't think it's ridiculous in a separate thread around discussing
voting practices. Anthony specifically notes that he is not calling
them bad, or calling for them to be ignored in the context of the
current RFCs. Merely noting that their existence has skewed this
particular vote, as a recent ongoing example, which it has. I have to
make an admission here, I cast a vote. I'm not on Anthony's list
because I have used it previously a couple of times. I'm honestly a
bit hesitant to believe I should have it, so I've deliberately
moderated my voting. However, watching those with no prior voting
history/or minimal history vote No compelled me to use it if only to
offset one more arguably irregular vote by casting an opposing
arguably irregular vote.

Should people like me have a vote? I got it by contributing some code
to PEAR long ago before I moved onto Zend Framework stuff, Mockery,
and other things. I consider it a relatively small contribution, and
the list makes clear many would prefer I didn't have a vote on that
basis. I don't necessarily disagree with that sentiment, but we're
stuck with the situation where contentious votes bring up the "who
deserves the right to vote" debate from both sides (Anthony is hardly
going solo in airing it here).

The entire idea that such arguably irregular votes are spoiling RFC
votes, i.e. not reflective of what the majority would consider votes
by those who truly earned it, has been brought up by both sides to
RFCs inside and outside of this list.

Paddy

--
Pádraic Brady

http://blog.astrumfutura.com
http://www.survivethedeepend.com

9 years ago by Florian Anderiasch — view source

unread

I don't think it's ridiculous in a separate thread around discussing
voting practices. Anthony specifically notes that he is not calling
them bad, or calling for them to be ignored in the context of the
current RFCs. Merely noting that their existence has skewed this
particular vote, as a recent ongoing example, which it has. I have to
make an admission here, I cast a vote. I'm not on Anthony's list
because I have used it previously a couple of times. I'm honestly a
bit hesitant to believe I should have it, so I've deliberately
moderated my voting. However, watching those with no prior voting
history/or minimal history vote No compelled me to use it if only to
offset one more arguably irregular vote by casting an opposing
arguably irregular vote.

Maybe many people don't see it that way, but for example for me there's
hardly been any RFC that would shape the spirit of the language as
much as this RFC. So I think that's a perfectly valid reason to - for
the first time ever - pitch in with your vote, even if it's not the case
for me personally.

The entire idea that such arguably irregular votes are spoiling RFC
votes, i.e. not reflective of what the majority would consider votes
by those who truly earned it, has been brought up by both sides to
RFCs inside and outside of this list.

I don't think it's possible to create a system that

a) represents the majority of PHP users
b) represents the most active contributors to internals
c) can't be gamed in any way.

We have this system now and until a RFC comes along to change voting
rights or revert to the old "do what you want until someone calls you
out on it" there's hardly some constructive discussion about it in all
the threads where it came up.

Greetings,
Florian

9 years ago by Stanislav Malyshev — view source

unread

Hi!

voting practices. Anthony specifically notes that he is not calling
them bad, or calling for them to be ignored in the context of the

He's not calling them bad directly, he is calling them "irregularities",
singling them out and arguing that they are the reason the RFC is
currently does not have necessary majority, and also specifically says
"not all of them bad", implying at least some of them are. It's as
close to "calling them bad" as you can go while still having that out
that he didn't say it directly. It's like saying "I'm not saying X is a
complete crook but look at <a long list of arguments which is intended to make everybody think X is a crook>".

current RFCs. Merely noting that their existence has skewed this
particular vote, as a recent ongoing example, which it has. I have to

Everybody's vote "has skewed this particular vote", by mere fact of
voting. So far we had many votes, in which many people voted, I have no
idea which of them voted for the first time when, still none of these
results were questioned for a reason that votes of people voting for the
first time or rarely is an "irregularity". Suddenly, when a particularly
controversial vote is going on, it is a problem. I do not consider it
healthy.

In other, more opportune and less controversial, time, with different
example at stake, this could be a useful discussion, though even then
I'd prefer not to start it with singling people out but with
establishing general principles and goals we want to achieve with this.

Stas Malyshev
smalyshev@gmail.com

9 years ago by eli@eliw.com — view source

unread

[...]
The following voters never voted before the dual-mode RFC went up:
[...]
eliw - no
[...]
Some of these names I recognize from list (sammywg and eliw), but many I do not.
[...]
I'm not saying that all of these are bad votes. Nor that they
shouldn't be counted. I think it does raise a significant question
around the voting practices.

Hello Anthony ... given I was 'called out' here I figured I should
respond. My vote (and the situation around it) is exactly what people
have assumed. That is:

I've long been a member (prominent by some people's definitions) of
the PHP Community
I've long been a member of Internals, and read everything, and at
times join the discussion when I feel I have something to contribute.
(If I don't, then I don't clutter the list - there's enough clutter and
enough amazingly smart people on this list, like both you and Zeev, that
I'm content to read the excellent discussions)
I was long (long) ago offered an acct to have a vote, and actually
declined because I didn't feel it warranted.
A while ago, I ended up getting an acct anyway, because I started
helping out with the documentation/webmaster/calendar stuff which noone
else was doing
I still never used my vote, on any issues, even the PHP 7 one which I
was one of the main instigators of. Because I, like Padraig, kinda was
in that mentality that I shouldn't use it. And that I would wait, until
there was a proposal that I felt very strongly about, and where my
vote/my voice could make a difference. To cast my vote.

And so in this case, my first case. I did cast a vote.

And unfortunately I have received no end of private (and some public)
flak about said vote. And while I know that you are just looking at
numbers and being open about 'Hey this is interesting lets chat about
this'. Others have not been so kind.

FWIW - I would always assume the best of people - And I would assume
that others on that voting list in fact were in similar situations.
Where they hadn't voted before simply because they didn't feel they felt
strongly enough about something. Also this is the first 'on the edge'
hyper-contentious vote in quite a while, which means that lurkers are
much more likely to have it come to their attention that this vote is
happening, and therefore that they should familiarize themselves with it
and cast a vote.

As to why so many of those 1st time voters, who have decided their vote
is worthwhile, happen to be voting no more often than not. Well I have
other theories on that (which do not include any negative consequences
or foul play, but simple cases of human mentality and 'community' vs
'community' discussions)

In service to PHP,
Eli

--
| Eli White | http://eliw.com/ | Twitter: EliW |

9 years ago by Arne Blankerts — view source

unread

Hi all,

since my handle was included in the list compiled by Anthony, I figured
I'd reply to internals list as well.

I ran some numbers on the current votes of the dual-mode vote right
now. There were a number of voters that I didn't recognize.

You may not recognize my account but I sure hope you recall speaking to
me in person before. You even attended one of my talks at Confoo last
year..

So I
decided to pull some stats.

The following voters never voted before the dual-mode RFC went up:

I cannot speak for anyone else, but I indeed didn't actively vote
before. I honestly though don't recall if me voting on this RFC was my
first vote or not. I also voted on other RFCs though.

If we adjust the votes to remove these "never voted" accounts, it
stands at 67:28. Which is 70.5%. Which is basically where the vote was
prior to the competing RFC opening.

Since sounds awfully like 2nd class voting. And, would you ask for the
same if the situation would be reversed?

I'm not saying that all of these are bad votes. Nor that they
shouldn't be counted.

Why would you calculate the "alternative" result then?

I think it does raise a significant question
around the voting practices.

Something that I think we need to discuss as a group.

Again, I can't speak for others but only myself. I decided to vote on
this RFC as well as some others since I believe my experience and
expertise might qualify. I didn't (and don't) vote on anything where I
feel I don't fully oversee the consequences or can judge the impact.

And because I think the RFCs I voted on are important.

Quite often before, I discussed things with others - for instance with
Sebastian Bergmann -, who then posted the results of our thoughts on
internals or talked to others on IRC to get more feedback. Last that
happened with the idea of providing the "throwable" interface as an
addition to the engine exceptions and in favor of the "base exception"
class.

Either way, I mostly only passively read on internals. I prefer talking
to people in person, or if there is no timely alternative on chat.

For what it's worth: I do have a php.net account since 2001, mostly
working on the German translation of the docs. If that and my general
"visibility" in the community entitles me to add my vote here is
something others have to judge. I honestly can't say.

But having my vote ignored (or at least considered questionable) because
it tends to sway the RFC results "in the wrong direction" feels really
odd.

Regards,
Arne

--
Those who do not understand Unix
are condemned to reinvent it, poorly (Henry Spencer,1987)

9 years ago by Rowan Collins — view source

unread

All,

I ran some numbers on the current votes of the dual-mode vote right
now. There were a number of voters that I didn't recognize. So I
decided to pull some stats.

The following voters never voted before the dual-mode RFC went up:

dom - no
eliw - no
kguest - yes
kk - no
nohn - no
oliver - yes
richsage - yes
sammywg - no
spriebsch - no
srain - no
theseer - no
zimt - no

Some of these names I recognize from list (sammywg and eliw), but many I do not.

The interesting thing happens when you look at the voting direction.

Currently, the RFC is slightly losing 70:37 (65.4%).

If we look at percentages, 4.2% of yes voters have never voted in a
prior RFC. But a whopping 24.3% of no voters have never voted before.

I think calling this an "irregularity" is going a bit far. It's an
interesting observation, but since this is such a contentious issue, the
question I would be asking is what these people have in common that
makes them likely to vote no - are they from a particular part of the
community whose voice is less often heard, for instance?

As I've just said on Twitter before seeing this thread, these are really
small sample sizes, and the way you've framed the statistics there makes
it sound more significant than it is. Wolfram Alpha tells me that if 12
people chose their vote by tossing a coin, there's a probability of
0.073 that 9 of them would vote the same way, which is higher than the
threshold of 0.05 traditionally set for significance. I don't know if
that's a valid statistic, but it's at least as scientific as your
"whopping 24.3%".

If you look at those users as a proportion of the complete "turnout",
you get 11.11% (1 in 9) votes coming from first-time voters. The net
impact is 6 votes out of 108, which is about 5.5%; that happens to be
enough to stop this vote crossing the line right now, but only because
the vote is so close anyway.

If we adjust the votes to remove these "never voted" accounts, it
stands at 67:28. Which is 70.5%. Which is basically where the vote was
prior to the competing RFC opening.

If you exclude an arbitrary subset of votes in a close ballot like this,
it's easy to edge it past the finishing post, but that's really an abuse
of statistics. For instance, you could say that if the vote was closed
on date X, the result would have been Y, but you can't know that there
weren't people who'd already decided which way they were voting, but
hadn't got round to logging in, because they knew the vote wasn't due to
close yet.

With more research, you could come up with other interesting subsets,
like people who've voted less than X times, or not voted in the last X
months. But if you're going to play with statistics, you should be
rigourous in defining your hypothesis, and how you'll measure the
significance of your result. Alternatively, leave the statistics out of
it, and say that you're interested to know why these first-time voters
voted how they did.

Regards,

--
Rowan Collins
[IMSoP]

9 years ago by Arvids Godjuks — view source

unread

C'mon guys, vote didn't pass, it's time to do something about it and not
start conspiracy theories (or I will loose hope for humanity completely). I
happened to have a job-free next week, i've been saying for a long time now
that this has to be tackled differently and even layed down some thoughts
on this. I do not think this can be done in single RFC, too much things to
handle, too much things are left out, many things are ignored by the RFC
people.

What we need, is a MANAGER! To manage the Type Hint development. And one
that is not doing real development on PHP core, but someone with
understanding.
I can offer myself at this point. I do not really care if thouse would be
strict or coercive type hints as long as it's not the dual mode stuff.

9 years ago by Levi Morrison — view source

unread

What we need, is a MANAGER! To manage the Type Hint development. And one
that is not doing real development on PHP core, but someone with
understanding.

You are basically saying we should hand development of a critical
language feature over to someone not doing real development on the
language. I don't see how that could possibly end well.

9 years ago by Arvids Godjuks — view source

unread

2015-03-15 20:55 GMT+02:00 Levi Morrison levim@php.net:

What we need, is a MANAGER! To manage the Type Hint development. And one
that is not doing real development on PHP core, but someone with
understanding.

You are basically saying we should hand development of a critical
language feature over to someone not doing real development on the
language. I don't see how that could possibly end well.

I'm saying you need a manager to orginize the process, and as I see it,
make it a multi-version effort, like the OOP has evolved. Well, I probably
over-generalized. It has to be atleast a userland developer with good
amount of PHP development experiense under his/her belt to understand, he
needs to have patiense, and above all, he needs to discipline himself on
amount of writing and replying, otherwise it will get messy again. It can
be a core dev too, it's just from what I have seen, people push their own
agenda too much when they are the developer behind the RFC. It's good over
all, but I think this paticular case is an exception.

And based on how long the type hints are taking to get anywhere, I say it
needs some special handling.

Type hints mutated over time from a simple proposal into something big,
over-engeneered and over-agressive. I have never seen a feature so complex
being done in a single go into PHP since i'm folowing internals list, and
that's since late days of PHP4...

So, long story short: I suggest we restructure the effort and have someone
impartial at the helm mediating the work being done, draw some lines and
execute a plan people can agreee on.

9 years ago by Derick Rethans — view source

unread

Rowan Collins rowan.collins@gmail.com schreef op 15 maart 2015 17:59:17 GMT+00:00:

All,

I ran some numbers on the current votes of the dual-mode vote right
now. There were a number of voters that I didn't recognize. So I
decided to pull some stats.

The following voters never voted before the dual-mode RFC went up:

dom - no
eliw - no
kguest - yes
kk - no
nohn - no
oliver - yes
richsage - yes
sammywg - no
spriebsch - no
srain - no
theseer - no
zimt - no

Some of these names I recognize from list (sammywg and eliw), but
many I do not.

The interesting thing happens when you look at the voting direction.

Currently, the RFC is slightly losing 70:37 (65.4%).

If we look at percentages, 4.2% of yes voters have never voted in a
prior RFC. But a whopping 24.3% of no voters have never voted before.

I think calling this an "irregularity" is going a bit far.
I don't think it's going to far, if you have people with no clue writing this:

https://plus.google.com/+KristianK%C3%B6hntopp/posts/ijoDNH2M8mB

Which post says that we're turning PHP into Java. And to this misguided FUD post, that actively asks people to vote no, I can quite easily attribute a few more no votes of people that had never voted before...

Too late to tighten up the rules for this one, but something is definitely not right with the current process.

Cheers,
Derick

http://derickrethans.nl | http://xdebug.org
twitter: @derickr and @xdebug

9 years ago by Zeev Suraski — view source

unread

I don't think it's going to far, if you have people with no clue writing
this:

https://plus.google.com/+KristianK%C3%B6hntopp/posts/ijoDNH2M8mB

Derick,

Do you know who Kristian is and how instrumental he was in the proliferation
of PHP? How can you bring yourself to say he has no clue? It's fine that
you disagree with him, but saying he has no clue is offensive.

Let's also not pretend there hasn't been countless calls by the RFC
supporters to vote Yes, including ones that pretend there's no problem here
and it's good for everyone. If Kristian's position is FUD, so is that.

Zeev

9 years ago by Wim Godden — view source

unread

I don't think it's going to far, if you have people with no clue writing
this:

https://plus.google.com/+KristianK%C3%B6hntopp/posts/ijoDNH2M8mB

Do you know who Kristian is and how instrumental he was in the proliferation
of PHP? How can you bring yourself to say he has no clue? It's fine that
you disagree with him, but saying he has no clue is offensive.

Let's also not pretend there hasn't been countless calls by the RFC
supporters to vote Yes, including ones that pretend there's no problem here
and it's good for everyone. If Kristian's position is FUD, so is that.

Zeev,

I agree that Kristian might have played a part in the proliferation of
PHP, but shouldn't we consider not only creating a clearer set of
guidelines as to who receives voting karma, but also what the conditions
are for keeping voting karma ? Otherwise in 10 years time we'll have 250
people with voting karma, 150 of them for writing documentation or
submitting a single patch 20 years ago.
If at that point a critical RFC requires voting, those 150 people could
seriously skew the result and their votes would in some cases be
completely opposite to what the majority of active users would want.

Maybe this is a good topic for an unconference round table discussion at
one of the next conferences...

Just my 2 non-karma cents...

Wim

9 years ago by Zeev Suraski — view source

unread

-----Original Message-----
From: Wim Godden [mailto:wim.godden@cu.be]
Sent: Sunday, March 15, 2015 11:30 PM
To: Zeev Suraski
Cc: internals@lists.php.net
Subject: Re: [PHP-DEV] Voting irregularities

I don't think it's going to far, if you have people with no clue
writing
this:

https://plus.google.com/+KristianK%C3%B6hntopp/posts/ijoDNH2M8mB

Do you know who Kristian is and how instrumental he was in the
proliferation of PHP? How can you bring yourself to say he has no
clue? It's fine that you disagree with him, but saying he has no clue
is
offensive.

Let's also not pretend there hasn't been countless calls by the RFC
supporters to vote Yes, including ones that pretend there's no problem
here and it's good for everyone. If Kristian's position is FUD, so is
that.

Zeev,

I agree that Kristian might have played a part in the proliferation of
PHP, but
shouldn't we consider not only creating a clearer set of guidelines as to
who
receives voting karma, but also what the conditions are for keeping voting
karma ? Otherwise in 10 years time we'll have 250 people with voting
karma,
150 of them for writing documentation or submitting a single patch 20
years
ago.

Any discussion about who gets to vote should be done after we're done voting
and not right now. The quiet period after the PHP 7.0 votes are over would
probably be good for that.

Zeev

9 years ago by Derick Rethans — view source

unread

I don't think it's going to far, if you have people with no clue writing
this:

https://plus.google.com/+KristianK%C3%B6hntopp/posts/ijoDNH2M8mB

Do you know who Kristian is and how instrumental he was in the
proliferation of PHP? How can you bring yourself to say he has no
clue?

I certainly know who he is. I've been around as nearly as long as you've
been. Anybody who's only argument is "You're turning PHP into Java" and
basically says "we need four more against votes" has no clue. I don't
care who says it.

cheers,
Derick

9 years ago by Jordi Boggiano — view source

unread

I don't think it's going to far, if you have people with no clue writing
this:

https://plus.google.com/+KristianK%C3%B6hntopp/posts/ijoDNH2M8mB

Do you know who Kristian is and how instrumental he was in the
proliferation of PHP? How can you bring yourself to say he has no
clue?

I certainly know who he is. I've been around as nearly as long as you've
been. Anybody who's only argument is "You're turning PHP into Java" and
basically says "we need four more against votes" has no clue. I don't
care who says it.

I agree that past good deeds and contributions should not be a free pass
for bad behavior. Not going to discuss the example at hand, but I think
it's dangerous to say "it's ok he did good in the past".

Cheers
Jordi

9 years ago by Pierre Joye — view source

unread

I don't think it's going to far, if you have people with no clue writing
this:

https://plus.google.com/+KristianK%C3%B6hntopp/posts/ijoDNH2M8mB

Do you know who Kristian is and how instrumental he was in the
proliferation of PHP? How can you bring yourself to say he has no
clue?

I certainly know who he is. I've been around as nearly as long as you've
been. Anybody who's only argument is "You're turning PHP into Java" and
basically says "we need four more against votes" has no clue. I don't
care who says it.

I agree that past good deeds and contributions should not be a free pass for
bad behavior. Not going to discuss the example at hand, but I think it's
dangerous to say "it's ok he did good in the past".

I cannot agree more. I deeply respect Kristian, in all possible manners.

However, I never call to vote for a given RFC but state what I think
and let people make their own choice. Big names, all relative, have a
social responsibility when it comes to ask people to vote for or
against a given features. Big names backed by companies even more,
even if something is done on a private manner. We have to be extremely
careful on that. And "we" include myself.

--
Pierre

@pierrejoye | http://www.libgd.org

9 years ago by Philip Sturgeon — view source

unread

One rule I liked when I was part of the FIG was that people can only
vote on votes initiated after they became a member. That stops people
signing up simply to vote on an RFC which needs more votes either way.

I'm not saying that happened, but a simple rule saying "You cannot
vote on any RFC started before you signed up" should not be considered
controversial by anyone.

9 years ago by Stanislav Malyshev — view source

unread

Hi!

One rule I liked when I was part of the FIG was that people can only
vote on votes initiated after they became a member. That stops people
signing up simply to vote on an RFC which needs more votes either way.

That makes a lot of sense, though I don't think we had much of this
issue. First, I don't think we have that many newcomers (as opposed to
people lurking and voting only rarely). Second, if somebody wanted to
game the system, nothing would prevent him from having their friends
join a day before the vote is initiated. The reverse is harder, but only
a bit - if one wants to organize a covert downvoting campaign against
somebody, discussion period gives enough chance to gather the troops. Of
course, as you noted, no evidence this actually happened. But despite
that, if this improves the voting procedure, why not.

--
Stas Malyshev
smalyshev@gmail.com

9 years ago by Ferenc Kovacs — view source

unread

2015.03.16. 4:18 ezt írta ("Philip Sturgeon" pjsturgeon@gmail.com):

One rule I liked when I was part of the FIG was that people can only
vote on votes initiated after they became a member. That stops people
signing up simply to vote on an RFC which needs more votes either way.

I'm not saying that happened, but a simple rule saying "You cannot
vote on any RFC started before you signed up" should not be considered
controversial by anyone.

While I think that this wouldn't satisfy everybody, but I do think that
nobody would be against this.
Please make a new thread for this, and I will be looking into patching it
into wiki.

9 years ago by Andrey Hristov — view source

unread

I don't think it's going to far, if you have people with no clue
writing
this:

https://plus.google.com/+KristianK%C3%B6hntopp/posts/ijoDNH2M8mB

Do you know who Kristian is and how instrumental he was in the
proliferation of PHP? How can you bring yourself to say he has no
clue?

I certainly know who he is. I've been around as nearly as long as you've
been. Anybody who's only argument is "You're turning PHP into Java" and
basically says "we need four more against votes" has no clue. I don't
care who says it.

I agree that past good deeds and contributions should not be a free pass
for bad behavior. Not going to discuss the example at hand, but I think
it's dangerous to say "it's ok he did good in the past".

so you think he has an army of lemmings with karma, who can't think but
can vote NO?

Cheers
Jordi

Best,
Andrey

9 years ago by Thomas Bley — view source

unread

Which post says that we're turning PHP into Java

I think there are people who want to switch from Java to PHP, maybe they feel easier with declare(strict...).
Also in the past, some companies switched from PHP to Java because they wanted more strictness in their backend code.

I don't like declare(strict...), but we should give it a chance in practice and then every userland developer can decide on his own if his programming style fits to it, or not.
For me personally, I must admit that I am not using namespaces, traits and goto, but almost all other features of PHP :)

Regards
Thomas

Derick Rethans wrote on 15.03.2015 20:07:

Rowan Collins rowan.collins@gmail.com schreef op 15 maart 2015 17:59:17
GMT+00:00:

All,

I ran some numbers on the current votes of the dual-mode vote right
now. There were a number of voters that I didn't recognize. So I
decided to pull some stats.

The following voters never voted before the dual-mode RFC went up:

dom - no
eliw - no
kguest - yes
kk - no
nohn - no
oliver - yes
richsage - yes
sammywg - no
spriebsch - no
srain - no
theseer - no
zimt - no

Some of these names I recognize from list (sammywg and eliw), but
many I do not.

The interesting thing happens when you look at the voting direction.

Currently, the RFC is slightly losing 70:37 (65.4%).

If we look at percentages, 4.2% of yes voters have never voted in a
prior RFC. But a whopping 24.3% of no voters have never voted before.

I think calling this an "irregularity" is going a bit far.
I don't think it's going to far, if you have people with no clue writing this:

https://plus.google.com/+KristianK%C3%B6hntopp/posts/ijoDNH2M8mB

Which post says that we're turning PHP into Java. And to this misguided FUD
post, that actively asks people to vote no, I can quite easily attribute a few
more no votes of people that had never voted before...

Too late to tighten up the rules for this one, but something is definitely not
right with the current process.

Cheers,
Derick

http://derickrethans.nl | http://xdebug.org
twitter: @derickr and @xdebug

9 years ago by Stelian Mocanita — view source

unread

Can we please stop with this? It's damaging to the language and the
community.

I am a strong believer of STH, no surprise there, but I do not think this
thread should have
been created. Is the php voting process uncontrolled and chaotic with no
real count of voting
members? Hell yes.

This does not mean by far that this is the right time to discuss this. Let
the RFCs go their way
and once feature freeze is in and no more RFCs popping up for a while, the
process can be
discussed and optimised, if the case may be.

All in all STH has turned into this big charade, and no matter which way it
goes someone, there
are going to be a lot of future friction and "told you so's".

In terms of managers, we do have a release manager, stick to that for the
7.0 release, re-evaluate
after.

My 2 cents,
Stelian

Which post says that we're turning PHP into Java

I think there are people who want to switch from Java to PHP, maybe they
feel easier with declare(strict...).
Also in the past, some companies switched from PHP to Java because they
wanted more strictness in their backend code.

I don't like declare(strict...), but we should give it a chance in
practice and then every userland developer can decide on his own if his
programming style fits to it, or not.
For me personally, I must admit that I am not using namespaces, traits and
goto, but almost all other features of PHP :)

Regards
Thomas

Derick Rethans wrote on 15.03.2015 20:07:

Rowan Collins rowan.collins@gmail.com schreef op 15 maart 2015
17:59:17
GMT+00:00:

All,

I ran some numbers on the current votes of the dual-mode vote right
now. There were a number of voters that I didn't recognize. So I
decided to pull some stats.

The following voters never voted before the dual-mode RFC went up:

dom - no
eliw - no
kguest - yes
kk - no
nohn - no
oliver - yes
richsage - yes
sammywg - no
spriebsch - no
srain - no
theseer - no
zimt - no

Some of these names I recognize from list (sammywg and eliw), but
many I do not.

The interesting thing happens when you look at the voting direction.

Currently, the RFC is slightly losing 70:37 (65.4%).

If we look at percentages, 4.2% of yes voters have never voted in a
prior RFC. But a whopping 24.3% of no voters have never voted before.

I think calling this an "irregularity" is going a bit far.
I don't think it's going to far, if you have people with no clue writing
this:

https://plus.google.com/+KristianK%C3%B6hntopp/posts/ijoDNH2M8mB

Which post says that we're turning PHP into Java. And to this misguided
FUD
post, that actively asks people to vote no, I can quite easily attribute
a few
more no votes of people that had never voted before...

Too late to tighten up the rules for this one, but something is
definitely not
right with the current process.

Cheers,
Derick

http://derickrethans.nl | http://xdebug.org
twitter: @derickr and @xdebug

9 years ago by Stanislav Malyshev — view source

unread

Hi!

Which post says that we're turning PHP into Java. And to this
misguided FUD post, that actively asks people to vote no, I can quite
easily attribute a few more no votes of people that had never voted
before...

I have seen many messages on the list which I personally consider very
wrong and/or misguided, and that called to vote yes. And I can, if I'd
like to, attribute significant number of yes votes to it (of course, the
true answer is I have no idea if it's so or not, but neither do you,
right?). Does it mean those votes are invalid? Does it mean I can pick
and choose yes votes I dislike and throw them out (I'd even include 1/4
of opposite votes just like it was done in topic-starting message, for
fairness :) I don't think that would be a healthy process, do you?

Too late to tighten up the rules for this one, but something is
definitely not right with the current process.

OK, what do you offer to improve it? Restrict who can vote? How? Allow
votes only to people that are well-informed? How do you distinguish
"well informed" from "agrees with me"? So far I don't think solution for
this issue has been ever found, even when the stakes are much much
higher than strict typing in PHP, but if you have a solution it would
certainly be interesting to hear it.

Stas Malyshev
smalyshev@gmail.com

9 years ago by Rowan Collins — view source

unread

Rowan Collins rowan.collins@gmail.com schreef op 15 maart 2015 17:59:17 GMT+00:00:

All,

I ran some numbers on the current votes of the dual-mode vote right
now. There were a number of voters that I didn't recognize. So I
decided to pull some stats.

The following voters never voted before the dual-mode RFC went up:

dom - no
eliw - no
kguest - yes
kk - no
nohn - no
oliver - yes
richsage - yes
sammywg - no
spriebsch - no
srain - no
theseer - no
zimt - no

Some of these names I recognize from list (sammywg and eliw), but
many I do not.
The interesting thing happens when you look at the voting direction.

Currently, the RFC is slightly losing 70:37 (65.4%).

If we look at percentages, 4.2% of yes voters have never voted in a
prior RFC. But a whopping 24.3% of no voters have never voted before.
I think calling this an "irregularity" is going a bit far.
I don't think it's going to far, if you have people with no clue writing this:

https://plus.google.com/+KristianK%C3%B6hntopp/posts/ijoDNH2M8mB

What I said was going too far was pointing at a cherry-picked statistic
and calling it "voting irregularities". That has nothing to do with
people's motivations for voting, and whether they were well-founded.

It's not an "irregularity" when far-right politicians get voted into
power, however misguided I may feel the voters were; it's simply a
result of holding an election in the first place. Ultimately, you can
either give people the right to participate and accept they may act
unwisely, or you can appoint an unchallengable meritocracy and accept
that they may act unpopularly.

That's not to say that voting reform can't be considered - at, as Zeev
says, an appropriate time - but that the rules should be based on
principles of fairness, not analysis of how past votes would have turned
out.

Regards,

--
Rowan Collins
[IMSoP]

9 years ago by Peter Petermann — view source

unread

Hi Anthony,

I am zimt.

And yes, you are correct, i haven't voted before, infact, I've kept myself
out of all discussions for a long time - for my own reasons,
however after reading into your proposal, the discussion around it, I made
the decision to cast a vote against your RFC.

You can't just throw votes away because "that person never voted before",
that would be exclude everyone who has never voted before.
If that practise was applied to all RFC, well you'd end up with only those
people to vote who voted between the introduction of voting and now.
If you start picking where to apply which vote, then you start fixing the
votes to your likings, and thats not how it is supposed to work.

If you think it raises a question about voting practises, then please state
the question, because saying one thing and then saying
"i'm not saying" doesn't lead anywhere. And if this is really about the
voting practise, why is the numbers on what it would do with your RFC to
ignore the oldtimers relevant?

regards,
Peter Petermann

2015-03-15 15:19 GMT+01:00 Anthony Ferrara ircmaxell@gmail.com:

All,

I ran some numbers on the current votes of the dual-mode vote right
now. There were a number of voters that I didn't recognize. So I
decided to pull some stats.

The following voters never voted before the dual-mode RFC went up:

dom - no
eliw - no
kguest - yes
kk - no
nohn - no
oliver - yes
richsage - yes
sammywg - no
spriebsch - no
srain - no
theseer - no
zimt - no

Some of these names I recognize from list (sammywg and eliw), but many I
do not.

The interesting thing happens when you look at the voting direction.

Currently, the RFC is slightly losing 70:37 (65.4%).

If we look at percentages, 4.2% of yes voters have never voted in a
prior RFC. But a whopping 24.3% of no voters have never voted before.

If we adjust the votes to remove these "never voted" accounts, it
stands at 67:28. Which is 70.5%. Which is basically where the vote was
prior to the competing RFC opening.

I'm not saying that all of these are bad votes. Nor that they
shouldn't be counted. I think it does raise a significant question
around the voting practices.

Something that I think we need to discuss as a group.

So consider that discussion open.

Anthony

--

--
Peter Petermann
Email: ppetermann80@gmail.com - get my public PGP key from SKS Keyservers
PGP Key:
http://pool.sks-keyservers.net:11371/pks/lookup?op=get&search=0x0E6DBD675836A5C7

9 years ago by Matthew Leverton — view source

unread

All,

I ran some numbers on the current votes of the dual-mode vote right
now. There were a number of voters that I didn't recognize. So I
decided to pull some stats.

...

Something that I think we need to discuss as a group.

So consider that discussion open.

I think this is likely because the votes are made public during voting
phase. To me, that is a bad thing. It makes for an ugly voting period.
That sort of politics should happen during the discussion phase.

So I don't think there's anything wrong with "first time voters"
voting No en masse here. I just think there's a major problem in
having a real-time count of votes during the voting period.

If votes weren't made public during the voting, then more people would
vote on more issues... avoiding this situation where people come from
"nowhere" to cast a vote as word gets out on blogs that something
terrible is about to happen.

In short, I think the real-time public vote results causes a few problems:

Bandwagon voting, or "vote for the winner" mindset. The early wave
of voters can impact the results by discouraging people from voting.
(Look at Zeev's RFC vote count vs Anthony's.)
The losing side feverishly drumming up votes, often with scare
tactics - i.e., vocal minority. (It's much easier for the "No" side of
any vote to appeal to this.)
In rare cases, Gaming the system - closing the vote at the exact
time that benefits the owner of the RFC.

So I don't think there's anything sinister here. It's just the natural
result of the voting rules.

--
Matthew Leverton

9 years ago by Robert Stoll — view source

unread

-----Ursprüngliche Nachricht-----
Von: Matthew Leverton [mailto:leverton@gmail.com]
Gesendet: Sonntag, 15. März 2015 20:46
An: Anthony Ferrara
Cc: internals@lists.php.net
Betreff: Re: [PHP-DEV] Voting irregularities

All,

I ran some numbers on the current votes of the dual-mode vote right
now. There were a number of voters that I didn't recognize. So I
decided to pull some stats.

...

Something that I think we need to discuss as a group.

So consider that discussion open.

I think this is likely because the votes are made public during voting phase. To me, that is a bad thing. It makes for an ugly
voting period.
That sort of politics should happen during the discussion phase.

So I don't think there's anything wrong with "first time voters"
voting No en masse here. I just think there's a major problem in having a real-time count of votes during the voting period.

If votes weren't made public during the voting, then more people would vote on more issues... avoiding this situation
where people come from "nowhere" to cast a vote as word gets out on blogs that something terrible is about to happen.

In short, I think the real-time public vote results causes a few problems:

Bandwagon voting, or "vote for the winner" mindset. The early wave of voters can impact the results by discouraging
people from voting.
(Look at Zeev's RFC vote count vs Anthony's.)

The losing side feverishly drumming up votes, often with scare tactics - i.e., vocal minority. (It's much easier for the "No"
side of any vote to appeal to this.)

In rare cases, Gaming the system - closing the vote at the exact time that benefits the owner of the RFC.

So I don't think there's anything sinister here. It's just the natural result of the voting rules.

--
Matthew Leverton

--

I agree with Matthew here, the voting process should be revised and votes should not be public -- for anyone -- until closed. I mean, every sane democratic country is using the secret ballot method, why shouldn't PHP use it?

But I am not a voter, so just my 2 cents

Cheers, Robert

9 years ago by padraic.brady@gmail.com — view source

unread

Hi,

I'm not saying that all of these are bad votes. Nor that they
shouldn't be counted. I think it does raise a significant question
around the voting practices.

I think folk should be cautious about linking the proximity of a
certain RFC to this topic. It appears to be leading to "conspiracy
theory" cries despite Anthony's statement above. As I've already
indicated, and being a Yes voter, I'm sort of dubious about even my
own voting rights, and votes of my nature have previously been called
out as a bad thing by people on both sides of the RFC.

As such, there does appear to be a debate to be had. The timing may be
unfortunate, given the sensitivity around the scalar type RFCs, but
that doesn't remove the fact that the debate should be had if it's
going to be dumped onto Twitter and other threads by other people who
are not called Anthony ;).

As to whether the quoted data suggests suspicious activities: no. The
pool of voters is tiny and no trends or conclusions can be drawn, and
the number of votes shows that the RFCs have attracted immense
attention which would attract erstwhile non-voters which might easily
warp the expected result of any vote simply by them exercising their
vote unexpectedly. The concern around handing out votes too freely
still exists, and I respect that. From the responses thus far, others
have declined to exercise or restrict their votes so we do have
"issues" to resolve in making it absolutely clear who may or may not
vote without feeling some sense of guilt or inviting comment when the
vote count reaches for the sky and those like me come out of the
woodwork ;).

Paddy

--
Pádraic Brady

http://blog.astrumfutura.com
http://www.survivethedeepend.com

9 years ago by Stanislav Malyshev — view source

unread

Hi!

theory" cries despite Anthony's statement above. As I've already
indicated, and being a Yes voter, I'm sort of dubious about even my
own voting rights, and votes of my nature have previously been called
out as a bad thing by people on both sides of the RFC.

If you think you're not informed enough or not in position, or don't
have opinion about something - it's ok not to vote, it's not mandatory
:) Of course, now not voting is declared suspicious so who knows, but
there's absolutely no shame in abstaining if one doesn't feel ready to
take a position. Having the opportunity to vote, of course, is quite a
different matter.

On a more broad note, if people are really dissatisfied with voting,
let's look for alternatives. But I personally would like to see a bit
more of a positive program. I mean, ok, voting is not good as currently
done. So who you think should be voting? Only engine committers? Only
PHP source committers? Only Chosen People, chosen by TBD process? Or
should we get rid of voting and do what instead?
I am far from claiming current process is ideal, and I had my deal of
frustrations by it. But so far I don't see anything that would be
clearly better, both from process and from legitimacy side. Do you?

Stas Malyshev
smalyshev@gmail.com

9 years ago by Stanislav Malyshev — view source

unread

Hi!

So consider that discussion open.

I guess this would have to happen sooner or later - sooner or later
somebody, when the vote doesn't go their way, would cry "who are all
these people? It can't be right they are all legit, there must be
something wrong". I'm not sure though where this discussion is supposed
to lead. What outcome should it produce? OK, you have singled out 12
people (some I recognize, some I do not, which means nothing except
probably my memory is bad or I haven't met them) and called their votes
"irregularity". I know if you did that to me I'd be annoyed, but of
course they don't have to think like I do.
Still, I don't see where this is going - are we to question or reject
every vote from a person that votes rarely? Are we to institute stricter
rules for who gets a vote, and if so, which ones? Are we just to throw
out votes because RFC author doesn't accept them and without them the
RFC passes and is it going to be a normal process for us from now on?

Discussion of such sort, especially while singling out people for
exclusion, is very dangerous and should be done very carefully. Even
when not connected to a controversial topic and is bound to change the
resulting outcome. When it does, I'm not sure it's a good place and time
to start it at all.

Stas Malyshev
smalyshev@gmail.com

9 years ago by Dennis Birkholz — view source

unread

Hi all,

Am 15.03.2015 um 15:19 schrieb Anthony Ferrara:

... There were a number of voters that I didn't recognize.

I wondered about who the people are that vote and how they "earned" the
right to do so. I think this kind of confusion could be avoided if
people.php.net would contain a little more information. Each profile
should contain the reason why the person got the voting karma granted
(and when maybe). Then you don't stumble over empty profile pages and
this kind of discussion is solved until someone bothers to propose an
RFC to change voting rules.

Thanks for listening
Dennis

9 years ago by kris@koehntopp.de — view source

unread

kk - no

That is me. And I voted no on a broken poposal.

K

--
Kristian Köhntopp http://google.com/+KristianKohntopp

9 years ago by kris@koehntopp.de — view source

unread

That is me. And I voted no on a broken poposal.

And because some people asked, the kk account is not new.

I have been using PHP since about 1997/98, joining the community around the times of the first PHP 3.0 beta-releases. Boris Erdmann and I wrote something called PHPLIB (http://marc.info/?l=php-general&m=90222503034131&w=2, http://marc.info/?l=php-general&m=90281652210710&w=2) which implemented some kind of session management that has been rewritten into the session module of PHP 4.

I also wrote the Posix and Recode extensions back then, worked on the LDAP extension, and dissed Zeev because of the C++ way of implementing constructors instead of using __init or __construct (php-dev@lists.php.net/msg36275.html" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">http://www.mail-archive.com/php-dev@lists.php.net/msg36275.html, and many other messages before that). I also annoyed people into implementing __get, __set and __call, which over time became http://php.net/manual/en/language.oop5.magic.php

I blogged https://plus.google.com/u/0/+KristianK%C3%B6hntopp/posts/ijoDNH2M8mB, and apparently that motivated a number of people to look into this and form an opinion, which is good. PHP already has too many things that can be enabled and disabled at the language level, and too many ways to enable and disable functionality in the language. It should have one typing system, not many and certainly not any way to switch these on and off, no matter how.

At the current state and climate of discussion I personally think it would be best for the language and the community for each and every proposal to change the type system to fail or be withdrawn.

From my current experience, it may have been best for the language to have chosen the Python way of things back 20 years ago

3 + "2"
Traceback (most recent call last):
File "<stdin>", line 1, in <module>
TypeError: unsupported operand type(s) for +: 'int' and 'str'
3 + int("2")
5
3 + int("2a")
Traceback (most recent call last):
File "<stdin>", line 1, in <module>
ValueError: invalid literal for int() with base 10: '2a'

but it is too late now. Neither of the current proposals actually improves a lot for anybody, but making that improvement optional, how little it may ever be, is just insane.

If you MUST have one proposal succeeding, I am of the opinion that one should support the one by Zeev with the modification that it actually warns about things instead of erroring right now (E_DEPRECATED or something), and make that errors in the release after the current. I do think that because it is ONE type system, not optional and because it actually finds things that are broken and complains about these. Just make the transition more gradual than it is now, in order to ease adoption.

K

--
Kristian Köhntopp http://google.com/+KristianKohntopp

9 years ago by Hannes Magnusson — view source

unread

All,

I ran some numbers on the current votes of the dual-mode vote right
now. There were a number of voters that I didn't recognize. So I
decided to pull some stats.

The following voters never voted before the dual-mode RFC went up:

To minimize noise on this list I would appreciate if you stay on
topic, your blog is a better venue then this list.

If you need to confirm the statistics, or gather more background data,
then feel free to contact me privately, off the list, and I'll get you
the account approval dates (karma and/or wiki).

Thanks!

-Hannes

9 years ago by Sebastian B.-Hagensen — view source

unread

Hi,

2015-03-17 20:55 GMT+01:00 Hannes Magnusson hannes.magnusson@gmail.com:

If you need to confirm the statistics, or gather more background data,
then feel free to contact me privately, off the list, and I'll get you
the account approval dates (karma and/or wiki).

While I agree that the issue at hand was not presented in the way it
should have been may still become a valid issue in the future.
If you want to prevent situations or even (wrong) ideas and
accusations like these the dates of account creations have to be
public and easily accessible by everyone involved (publicly listed on
people.php.net for example).

9 years ago by Hannes Magnusson — view source

unread

On Tue, Mar 17, 2015 at 2:15 PM, Sebastian B.-Hagensen
sbj.ml.read@gmail.com wrote:

Hi,

2015-03-17 20:55 GMT+01:00 Hannes Magnusson hannes.magnusson@gmail.com:

If you need to confirm the statistics, or gather more background data,
then feel free to contact me privately, off the list, and I'll get you
the account approval dates (karma and/or wiki).

While I agree that the issue at hand was not presented in the way it
should have been may still become a valid issue in the future.
If you want to prevent situations or even (wrong) ideas and
accusations like these the dates of account creations have to be
public and easily accessible by everyone involved (publicly listed on
people.php.net for example).

people.php.net are php.net karma holders. We have no responsibility to
disclose any information about our contributors to anyone.
It is however fun to do so, so I created people.php.net listing random
info about our contributors. If you can think of other fun things to
do with that website, I'd love feedback and contributions!

The wiki account system is different. php.net karma holders have
access out-of-the-box using their vcs credentials.
Then there is a special case where you have to register to the wiki itself.
Having a wiki account does nothing out-of-the-box.
You have to ask for specific access.
Since the inception of the wiki I have been the only one giving out
wiki credentials. This has mostly been to outsiders wanting to write
RFCs.
I have vague memories having given 2-3 people access to
https://wiki.php.net/usergroups and similar to docs and so on.
These people still cannot vote.
A person who maintains popular pecl extension cannot vote either,
unless the extension is maintained on the php.net infrastructure (and
therefore requiring php.net account) btw.

There have been several members from the community that have asked for
voting privileges, as per the voting rfc. I have arbitrary approved
maybe 3 or 4 over the years. The other 5-10 did not get voting
privileges because the authors of the voting rfc didn't care.

I have absolutely no interest this voting business and and strongly
disagree with the entire voting rfc idea. I would love to get back to
http://producingoss.com/en/consensus-democracy.html

Now. Please go on and become famous by blogging about conspiracy
theories (I've got plenty if you are short of ideas!) or whatever
tickles your fancy - but please don't be dragging this onto the list.

-Hannes

9 years ago by Pierre Joye — view source

unread

hi,

On Wed, Mar 18, 2015 at 9:00 AM, Hannes Magnusson
hannes.magnusson@gmail.com wrote:

On Tue, Mar 17, 2015 at 2:15 PM, Sebastian B.-Hagensen
sbj.ml.read@gmail.com wrote:

Hi,

2015-03-17 20:55 GMT+01:00 Hannes Magnusson hannes.magnusson@gmail.com:

If you need to confirm the statistics, or gather more background data,
then feel free to contact me privately, off the list, and I'll get you
the account approval dates (karma and/or wiki).

While I agree that the issue at hand was not presented in the way it
should have been may still become a valid issue in the future.
If you want to prevent situations or even (wrong) ideas and
accusations like these the dates of account creations have to be
public and easily accessible by everyone involved (publicly listed on
people.php.net for example).

people.php.net are php.net karma holders. We have no responsibility to
disclose any information about our contributors to anyone.
It is however fun to do so, so I created people.php.net listing random
info about our contributors. If you can think of other fun things to
do with that website, I'd love feedback and contributions!

The wiki account system is different. php.net karma holders have
access out-of-the-box using their vcs credentials.
Then there is a special case where you have to register to the wiki itself.
Having a wiki account does nothing out-of-the-box.
You have to ask for specific access.
Since the inception of the wiki I have been the only one giving out
wiki credentials. This has mostly been to outsiders wanting to write
RFCs.
I have vague memories having given 2-3 people access to
https://wiki.php.net/usergroups and similar to docs and so on.
These people still cannot vote.
A person who maintains popular pecl extension cannot vote either,
unless the extension is maintained on the php.net infrastructure (and
therefore requiring php.net account) btw.

There have been several members from the community that have asked for
voting privileges, as per the voting rfc. I have arbitrary approved
maybe 3 or 4 over the years. The other 5-10 did not get voting
privileges because the authors of the voting rfc didn't care.

I have absolutely no interest this voting business and and strongly
disagree with the entire voting rfc idea. I would love to get back to
http://producingoss.com/en/consensus-democracy.html

that's your good right to disagree and I respect your opinion in that regard.

However, as of today, you are the blocking point when it comes to
improve the wiki RFCs, registration and voting areas.And this is
really becoming a problem. I am not talking about irregularities and
the likes and I agree that it may not be fair to start bitching about
one or another vote, especially for some 1st time voters but oldest
contributors. While I do see an issue with inactive developers
suddenly jumping in but not using or contributing to PHP in any form
since quite long. But this is a totally different issues and I really
have no idea how to solve that, I do not see it as a big issue either
so...

However, the RFCs have been abused in many possible ways where I
thought common sense will make people act fairly and correctly. I was
wrong. Having simple technical measures to ensure fairness in
discussions, voting and end of voting periods will prevent some of
these abuses to happen again. It is possible to achieve that without
going down a more drastic road (anonymous votes or other more deep
changes) but will make things work the same way for everyone.

The other problem I see, which becomes a habit for a couple of RFC
authors, is the quality of the RFC. On one hand we have detailed high
quality RFC, clear communications and flows and on the other hand,
incomplete, confusing, lack of communications (aka missing the points
of a Request for Comments completely). And this is a much more bigger
worry than anything else. We have to fix that and such RFCs must be
discarded or simply not accepted to vote unless they actually reach a
certain quality and will to discuss. I will start another separate
thread about that.

Now, to be able to actually implement the little technical measure to
ensure that everyone follows the same rules, I ask you one more time
to provide the data of the current wiki so patches, changes etc can be
implemented in a safer way. You know where to reach me to provide it.
Thanks for your cooperation.

Cheers,

Pierre

@pierrejoye | http://www.libgd.org

9 years ago by Hannes Magnusson — view source

unread

I have asked you before to stop harassing me, and stop spreading these
lies and defamation before.
Furthermore I have asked you to stop emailing all together.

I have asked you very politely several times before.

Please refrain for talking about me or to me ever again. I will take
legal actions if this does not stop.
Thank you for your understanding.

-Hannes

hi,

On Wed, Mar 18, 2015 at 9:00 AM, Hannes Magnusson
hannes.magnusson@gmail.com wrote:

On Tue, Mar 17, 2015 at 2:15 PM, Sebastian B.-Hagensen
sbj.ml.read@gmail.com wrote:

Hi,

2015-03-17 20:55 GMT+01:00 Hannes Magnusson hannes.magnusson@gmail.com:

If you need to confirm the statistics, or gather more background data,
then feel free to contact me privately, off the list, and I'll get you
the account approval dates (karma and/or wiki).

While I agree that the issue at hand was not presented in the way it
should have been may still become a valid issue in the future.
If you want to prevent situations or even (wrong) ideas and
accusations like these the dates of account creations have to be
public and easily accessible by everyone involved (publicly listed on
people.php.net for example).

people.php.net are php.net karma holders. We have no responsibility to
disclose any information about our contributors to anyone.
It is however fun to do so, so I created people.php.net listing random
info about our contributors. If you can think of other fun things to
do with that website, I'd love feedback and contributions!

The wiki account system is different. php.net karma holders have
access out-of-the-box using their vcs credentials.
Then there is a special case where you have to register to the wiki itself.
Having a wiki account does nothing out-of-the-box.
You have to ask for specific access.
Since the inception of the wiki I have been the only one giving out
wiki credentials. This has mostly been to outsiders wanting to write
RFCs.
I have vague memories having given 2-3 people access to
https://wiki.php.net/usergroups and similar to docs and so on.
These people still cannot vote.
A person who maintains popular pecl extension cannot vote either,
unless the extension is maintained on the php.net infrastructure (and
therefore requiring php.net account) btw.

There have been several members from the community that have asked for
voting privileges, as per the voting rfc. I have arbitrary approved
maybe 3 or 4 over the years. The other 5-10 did not get voting
privileges because the authors of the voting rfc didn't care.

I have absolutely no interest this voting business and and strongly
disagree with the entire voting rfc idea. I would love to get back to
http://producingoss.com/en/consensus-democracy.html

that's your good right to disagree and I respect your opinion in that regard.

However, as of today, you are the blocking point when it comes to
improve the wiki RFCs, registration and voting areas.And this is
really becoming a problem. I am not talking about irregularities and
the likes and I agree that it may not be fair to start bitching about
one or another vote, especially for some 1st time voters but oldest
contributors. While I do see an issue with inactive developers
suddenly jumping in but not using or contributing to PHP in any form
since quite long. But this is a totally different issues and I really
have no idea how to solve that, I do not see it as a big issue either
so...

However, the RFCs have been abused in many possible ways where I
thought common sense will make people act fairly and correctly. I was
wrong. Having simple technical measures to ensure fairness in
discussions, voting and end of voting periods will prevent some of
these abuses to happen again. It is possible to achieve that without
going down a more drastic road (anonymous votes or other more deep
changes) but will make things work the same way for everyone.

The other problem I see, which becomes a habit for a couple of RFC
authors, is the quality of the RFC. On one hand we have detailed high
quality RFC, clear communications and flows and on the other hand,
incomplete, confusing, lack of communications (aka missing the points
of a Request for Comments completely). And this is a much more bigger
worry than anything else. We have to fix that and such RFCs must be
discarded or simply not accepted to vote unless they actually reach a
certain quality and will to discuss. I will start another separate
thread about that.

Now, to be able to actually implement the little technical measure to
ensure that everyone follows the same rules, I ask you one more time
to provide the data of the current wiki so patches, changes etc can be
implemented in a safer way. You know where to reach me to provide it.
Thanks for your cooperation.

Cheers,

Pierre

@pierrejoye | http://www.libgd.org

9 years ago by Pierre Joye — view source

unread

On Mar 19, 2015 5:20 AM, "Hannes Magnusson" hannes.magnusson@gmail.com
wrote:

I have asked you before to stop harassing me, and stop spreading these
lies and defamation before.
Furthermore I have asked you to stop emailing all together.

I have asked you very politely several times before.

Please refrain for talking about me or to me ever again. I will take
legal actions if this does not stop.
Thank you for your understanding.

No idea what you are talking about and really not interested to this kind
of discussion, but I am still waiting for the data to valid changes.

Cheers,
Pierre

9 years ago by Christoph Becker — view source

unread

Pierre Joye wrote:

However, as of today, you are the blocking point when it comes to
improve the wiki RFCs, registration and voting areas.And this is
really becoming a problem. I am not talking about irregularities and
the likes and I agree that it may not be fair to start bitching about
one or another vote, especially for some 1st time voters but oldest
contributors. While I do see an issue with inactive developers
suddenly jumping in but not using or contributing to PHP in any form
since quite long. But this is a totally different issues and I really
have no idea how to solve that, I do not see it as a big issue either
so...

However, the RFCs have been abused in many possible ways where I
thought common sense will make people act fairly and correctly. I was
wrong. Having simple technical measures to ensure fairness in
discussions, voting and end of voting periods will prevent some of
these abuses to happen again. It is possible to achieve that without
going down a more drastic road (anonymous votes or other more deep
changes) but will make things work the same way for everyone.

[...]

Now, to be able to actually implement the little technical measure to
ensure that everyone follows the same rules, I ask you one more time
to provide the data of the current wiki so patches, changes etc can be
implemented in a safer way. You know where to reach me to provide it.
Thanks for your cooperation.

Whatever you want to improve, please consider that the PHP wiki is
driven by DokuWiki which needs to get updated from time to time (lately
there have been two updates every year[1]; this is not accounting any
necessary updates to DokuWiki plugins). These updates seem to be
painful already, due to the required customizations. It would be
helpful if further as well as existing customizations could be moved to
custom DokuWiki plugins as far as feasible.

Furthermore, please note that README.CONFIGURE[2] states:

| There is no data in cvs. The data is only available on the server and
| backup many times daily. If you need sample data using the production
| documents, please contact the php webmaster list.

To avoid potential misunderstandings: I'm rather new to php.net, and I
don't like to get involved into apparently long standing contentions.
Instead I'd prefer to help to maintain the technical base (i.e. the
software -- I'm no sys admin) of the wiki for the sake of PHP.

[1] http://cmsimpleforum.com/viewtopic.php?f=29&t=8602
[2] https://github.com/php/web-wiki/tree/master/docs

--
Christoph M. Becker

9 years ago by Pierre Joye — view source

unread

Pierre Joye wrote:

However, as of today, you are the blocking point when it comes to
improve the wiki RFCs, registration and voting areas.And this is
really becoming a problem. I am not talking about irregularities and
the likes and I agree that it may not be fair to start bitching about
one or another vote, especially for some 1st time voters but oldest
contributors. While I do see an issue with inactive developers
suddenly jumping in but not using or contributing to PHP in any form
since quite long. But this is a totally different issues and I really
have no idea how to solve that, I do not see it as a big issue either
so...

However, the RFCs have been abused in many possible ways where I
thought common sense will make people act fairly and correctly. I was
wrong. Having simple technical measures to ensure fairness in
discussions, voting and end of voting periods will prevent some of
these abuses to happen again. It is possible to achieve that without
going down a more drastic road (anonymous votes or other more deep
changes) but will make things work the same way for everyone.

[...]

Now, to be able to actually implement the little technical measure to
ensure that everyone follows the same rules, I ask you one more time
to provide the data of the current wiki so patches, changes etc can be
implemented in a safer way. You know where to reach me to provide it.
Thanks for your cooperation.

Whatever you want to improve, please consider that the PHP wiki is
driven by DokuWiki which needs to get updated from time to time (lately
there have been two updates every year[1]; this is not accounting any
necessary updates to DokuWiki plugins). These updates seem to be
painful already, due to the required customizations. It would be
helpful if further as well as existing customizations could be moved to
custom DokuWiki plugins as far as feasible.

I know, we setup it together with Lukas back then. And yes, most of
the changes should be plugins not patching the cores, the latter is a
maintenance nightmare.

Furthermore, please note that README.CONFIGURE[2] states:

| There is no data in cvs. The data is only available on the server and
| backup many times daily. If you need sample data using the production
| documents, please contact the php webmaster list.

I know that too and asked that for more than a year now. Hence my
rather undiplomatic mail.

To avoid potential misunderstandings: I'm rather new to php.net, and I
don't like to get involved into apparently long standing contentions.
Instead I'd prefer to help to maintain the technical base (i.e. the
software -- I'm no sys admin) of the wiki for the sake of PHP.

I very much appreciate your efforts and contributions, much much welcome! :)

Cheers,

Pierre

@pierrejoye | http://www.libgd.org

9 years ago by Levi Morrison — view source

unread

Whatever you want to improve, please consider that the PHP wiki is
driven by DokuWiki which needs to get updated from time to time (lately
there have been two updates every year[1]; this is not accounting any
necessary updates to DokuWiki plugins). These updates seem to be
painful already, due to the required customizations. It would be
helpful if further as well as existing customizations could be moved to
custom DokuWiki plugins as far as feasible.

Thankfully I've never had to do that part myself. Do we have a
document somewhere that explains our general update/upgrade procedure
for DokuWiki? Maybe now that PHP 7.0 is in feature freeze I can find
some time to work on our web infrastructure again.

9 years ago by Christoph Becker — view source

unread

Levi Morrison wrote:

Whatever you want to improve, please consider that the PHP wiki is
driven by DokuWiki which needs to get updated from time to time (lately
there have been two updates every year[1]; this is not accounting any
necessary updates to DokuWiki plugins). These updates seem to be
painful already, due to the required customizations. It would be
helpful if further as well as existing customizations could be moved to
custom DokuWiki plugins as far as feasible.

Thankfully I've never had to do that part myself. Do we have a
document somewhere that explains our general update/upgrade procedure
for DokuWiki? Maybe now that PHP 7.0 is in feature freeze I can find
some time to work on our web infrastructure again.

To my knowledge there is no such document; at least there's nothing in
the web-wiki repo[1]. However, upgrading DokuWiki installations is
usually rather painless.[2] The main issues would be code modifications
and evetual changes to the DokuWiki API.

Anyhow, further discussion on this topic might better be done on
webmaster@; perhaps my mail "Maintenability of the Wiki
implementation"[3] is a good starting point.

[1] http://git.php.net/?p=web/wiki.git;a=tree
[2] https://www.dokuwiki.org/install:upgrade
[3] http://news.php.net/php.webmaster/20899

--
Christoph M. Becker

Voting irregularities

Jeez, that is becoming ridiculous. So, if you’re that good in counting, how many did not vote before STHv0.3?

In other, more opportune and less controversial, time, with different example at stake, this could be a useful discussion, though even then I'd prefer not to start it with singling people out but with establishing general principles and goals we want to achieve with this.

Cheers, Derick

Cheers, Derick

Cheers, Derick

Discussion of such sort, especially while singling out people for exclusion, is very dangerous and should be done very carefully. Even when not connected to a controversial topic and is bound to change the resulting outcome. When it does, I'm not sure it's a good place and time to start it at all.

Cheers,

Cheers,

Cheers,

In other, more opportune and less controversial, time, with different
example at stake, this could be a useful discussion, though even then
I'd prefer not to start it with singling people out but with
establishing general principles and goals we want to achieve with this.

Cheers,
Derick

Cheers,
Derick

Cheers,
Derick

Discussion of such sort, especially while singling out people for
exclusion, is very dangerous and should be done very carefully. Even
when not connected to a controversial topic and is bound to change the
resulting outcome. When it does, I'm not sure it's a good place and time
to start it at all.