[python-committers] A different way to focus discussions

[Steven D'Aprano]

On Fri, May 18, 2018 at 03:25:37PM -0700, Guido van Rossum wrote:
> 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.

Do we have a reason to think that moving to Github will help discussions 
scale better?

At the moment, a controversial PEP generates a flood of email on 
Python-Ideas and a flood of email on Python-Dev. If all we do is add a 
third flood of posts on Github, that's not much of a win :-)

Aside from the nuisance value of having to sign up to yet another 
forum (Github as well as a mailing list), which isn't that big a 
nuisance given that these days most people have a Github account, I'm 
not too clear on the benefit of this.


> This way the discussion is still public: when the PEP-specific repo is
> created the author(s) can notify python-ideas, and when they are closer to
> submitting they can notify python-dev, but the discussion doesn't attract
> uninformed outsiders as much as python-{dev,ideas} discussions do, and it's
> much easier for outsiders who want to learn more about the proposal to find
> all relevant discussion.

Isn't that a bit of a contradiction?

- moving to GitHub doesn't attract outsiders
- while making it easier for outsiders




-- 
Steve