[Python-ideas] A bit meta

[Petr Viktorin]

On 01/29/2016 04:55 AM, Michael Selik wrote:
> One defect of a mailing list is the difficulty of viewing a weighted average of opinions. The benefit is that anyone can voice an opinion. This is more like the Senate than the House -- Rhode Island appears (on paper) to have as much influence as California. Luckily, we have a form of President. I'm guessing a House occurs in a more private mode of communication?

I've read up a bit on Wikipedia, so I'll try to start summarizing the
reference for the non-Americans who come after me.

One part of the US government is the "Congress", which is divided into
two "houses": the "Senate" and the House of Representatives (which, I
assume, is *the* "House").

Members of the House correspond to "districts", which are determined by
population (roughly, but the details seem irrelevant here) -- so each
member of the House corresponds roughly to some fixed number of people.
On the other hand, the Senate has two members for each "state", but
states aren't determined by population: "Rhode Island" has many fewer
people than "California". (Unsurprising, I might add: I never hear about
Rhode Island, but California makes it to local news here at times.)

There is also a "President", who doesn't seem to have as much power as
Python's BDFL: he/she can veto decisions of the Congress, but that veto
can in turn be overriden by the Congress.

Trying to hold all these details in my head while thinking how they
relate to mailing list discussions leaves me quite confused.

Would it be possible to make the argument clearer to people who need to
look these things up to understand it?


> Perhaps as the community gets larger, a system like StackOverflow might be a better tool for handling things like Python-Ideas.
> 
>> On Jan 27, 2016, at 12:58 PM, Sjoerd Job Postmus <sjoerdjob at sjec.nl> wrote:
>> (not sure if I even have the right to vote here, given that I'm not a
>> core developer, but just giving my opinion)