[python-committers] A different way to focus discussions

[Victor Stinner]

Hi,

2018-05-19 0:25 GMT+02:00 Guido van Rossum <guido at python.org>:
> Discussing PEPs on python-dev and python-ideas is clearly not scalable any
> more. (Even python-committers probably doesn't scale too well. :-)
>
> I wonder if it would make sense to require that for each PEP a new GitHub
> *repo* be created whose contents would just be a draft PEP and whose issue
> tracker and PR manager would be used to debate the PEP and propose specific
> changes.

Which problem do you want to solve? Reduce the number of emails per
month on python-ideas and python-dev? Reduce the number of messages
per PEP?

If the number of messages per PEP is the problem, I don't see how
replacing emails with GitHub would help. GitHub allows to add comments
on:

* commits
* issues
* pull requests

Anyone can open new issues and new pull requests. It might be harder
to follow discussions if they are occur at different parts of a single
repository.

I guess that your motivation is to prevent another PEP 572 mess.

IMHO the discussions on the PEP 572 became a mess because nobody
wanted to moderate the discussion. I asked on python-committers how to
calm down the discussion, but no action has been taken and the flow of
emails didn't stop.

A moderator can try to summarize the discussion or can ask to stop
discussing the PEP until the PEP is updated. For the PEP 572, it seems
like a few issues have been spotted in the PEP, but I don't recall an
email saying "these points must be fixed in the PEP, please wait until
the PEP is updated".

Will it be simpler to moderate discussions on GitHub? Or do you expect
that less people will go to GitHub, than on python-dev/python-ideas,
to discuss?

I like emails because it's plain text, it's easily readable on all
devices, there are archives (controlled by Python) which are readable
online, etc. I also like threads in emails. It's easy to see if I
missed messages. On GitHub, there is no markers of unread messages,
only notifications (well, there are also notifications with messages
;-)).

IMHO a PEP should summarize the most important discussed points.
Otherwise, each time that someone who don't know the PEP will read it,
the same discussion will restart from scratch. And I don't think that
PEP 572 made that.

> Thoughts? (We can dogfood this proposal too, if there's interest. :-)

Apart the PEP 572, I recalled that I have been annoyed by the fspath
protocol before a PEP has been written. I also recall that the
discussions stopped when I asked to wait until Brett (and someone
else, sorry I forgot) writes a PEP. For other PEPs, I think that the
volume of emails is acceptable.

I also like the idea of getting all PEPs in python-dev because it's
easier for me to be aware of currently discussed PEPs, even if I don't
read the discussions.

But it seems like I'm getting old and resist to the shiny new GitHub
which will solve all our issues ;-)

Victor