[python-committers] Timeline to vote for a governance PEP

[Steven D'Aprano]

On Sat, Nov 03, 2018 at 10:55:14AM +0000, Paul Moore wrote:
[...]
> Currently, I feel like my only option is to abstain and hope - I don't
> have the time (or knowledge) to review, understand and assess the
> proposals well enough to make an informed vote, but I have no way of
> assessing the "expert opinions" of those who do, to allow me to make a
> broad judgement. Frankly, I feel pretty disenfranchised by the process
> at the moment.

I think that there are legitimate criticisms of the way this transition 
and the discussion has been handled. (Such as the fragmentation of 
discussion and the difficulty in discovering where the pieces are.)

But let's be fair to those who have put in the effort to make this work 
so far. "Disenfranchisement" is not even close to a fair criticism.

Nobody has said you can't vote. Nobody is stripping you of your commit
bit, or your status as core dev. Nobody is going to tell you that you
can't vote because your name is similar to a convicted felon three
states away, or force you to stand in line for 16 hours at the one
polling booth for twenty miles on election day, and then turn you away
because you have the wrong kind of ID. Nobody is passing laws to strip
you of your ability to vote because of entirely spurious fears of "voter
fraud". (The actual fraud being legimate voters being disenfranchised
because they're poor or the wrong colour.)

With respect Paul, if we aren't willing to make even a minimal effort 
to make an informed vote, that's not disenfranchisement, that's just 
"can't be bothered".

"Can't be bothered" is a perfectly legitimate choice here -- I'm still 
considering it for myself. But I don't see how your current 
position is justified: as I read your post, your complaint is that you 
don't want to actually vote yourself, you don't have the time or 
inclination to study the proposals and make an informed choice, but 
you're disturbed that you don't know whether or not other people are 
likely to make the choice you would make if you did make an informed 
choice, which you aren't planning on doing.

"I know nothing about the issues, but I want to be sure everyone else 
will vote they way I would vote if I did."

I don't see how this is even possible. With respect, I think the answer 
to that is, well duh, if you don't vote or take part in the discussion, 
don't be surprised if people don't vote they way you want them to :-)

In any case, as I said, I think there are legitimate criticisms to be 
made. E.g. I think the decision to move the discussion to Discourse in 
the middle of the governance crisis was overly optimistic, the timing 
was not well thought-out, and making that decision behind closed doors 
and then announcing it as a fait acompli was certainly not living up to 
the ideals of openess, consideration and community-engagement that we 
claim to follow:

https://discuss.python.org/t/python-committers-is-dead-long-live-discuss-python-org/30

https://mail.python.org/pipermail/python-committers/2018-September/006187.html

But what's done is done, and we can't say we weren't informed or 
asked to open an account on Discourse.

But none of these criticisms are so serious as to bring the whole 
exercise into doubt. If we want to vote, we can. If we want to make 
an *informed* vote, we can read the PEPs:

https://www.python.org/dev/peps/pep-8000/

and we can start a discussion here or on Discourse.

Or if we want to just trust the rest of the community to do the right 
thing, that's a legitimate position too.

You've done the right thing asking about the discussion, and I'm sad 
that nobody has answered your question:

> how can I trust that the decision will be one I can be comfortable 
> with - and how do I influence the direction except by participating in 
> the discussions I've been unable to locate?

That's a reasonable question. I wish I had a better answer, but I too
have found it exceedingly hard to locate discussions. I know there has 
been some here, and some on Discourse (which I find hard to navigate, 
perhaps because of unfamiliarity).

Anywhere else? Zulip? I can't even find that, let alone tell if 
there are archived discussions.

The PEPs are on Github, has there been discussion there?

https://github.com/python/peps/blob/master/pep-8000.rst


-- 
Steve