Vote on PEP 308: Ternary Operator

[Martijn Faassen]

Hi there,

I really didn't want to be caught up with this (meta meta) discussion,
but I do not think this voting procedure takes people like me
into account.

Anyway, why it turned out this way is very explainable. The people who
liked the debates about ternary operators and liked to weigh them against
each other are the ones who designed the voting procedure, as they care.
This results in an overly complicated procedure that those who *don't*
care about ternary operators won't understand very well.

Raymond Hettinger <pep308vote at hotmail.com> wrote:
> Marking accept means that you prefer this format over no-change.
> Marking reject means that you prefer no-change, but if there is
> one, then the marked choice would be the best one.

Hm..my interpretation of this is:

This voting procedure is has been designed by those with an interest
in the adoption of a ternary operator. People who do not care about a
ternary operator will still have to examine ternary operators to pick their
preferences. They still have to understand this rather complicated voting 
procedure and list examples.

They need to understand that if they reject something they need to
reject their most favored choice, even though they don't favor any of them.
I think. I'm not sure what this all means.

Anyway, this is not an election for representatives, where I need *a*
representative at all. In that case the option 'none of the above' makes
less sense (though should still be supplied as it can indicate a message 
about the whole system). In this case it's however perfectly feasible
to be happy without a ternary operator and to say "I just plain don't want
to consider any".

[snip]
> The end result is that Guido will know which is the most preferred
> syntax AND the how much it is preferred to the status quo.

No it won't. People like me who did not bother to follow the discussion much
as they did not care about a ternary operator and did not want to consider
it much are faced with a rather complicated set of procedures to go to
in order to vote against any change in this regard at all. I still don't
really know what I should do..

Should I really need to figure out which of the options I
dislike *least* and then give examples of them? And then reject them?
Why do I need to put in all that effort when I just don't want any of them?
Perhaps some people were rather focused on the PEP 308 discussions and thinks
everybody voting wants to be caught up in them as well? Now I basically
have to end up picking some from a list of ternary operator candidates,
and then reject them, right? How are people who don't bother to spend
this much time trying to figure it out going to figure it out? 

Am I missing something here?

> EXCEPTION HANDLING
> ------------------
> If there is a dispute, I'll ask Laura Creighton to resolve it.
> Her decision will be final.

Laura, please help those of us who do not particularly want a 
ternary operator in Python and do not want to be educated in that
respect, and still want to put in a vote if only they could figure
out a sensible way to do so.

Though I hope I'm just missing something here..

Regards,

Martijn
-- 
History of the 20th Century: WW1, WW2, WW3?
No, WWW -- Could we be going in the right direction?