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

[Brett Cannon]

On Thu, 15 Nov 2018 at 05:09, Paul Moore <p.f.moore at gmail.com> wrote:

> On Thu, 15 Nov 2018 at 12:55, M.-A. Lemburg <mal at egenix.com> wrote:
> >
> > I find it rather unusual that we are pushed to vote on PEPs
> > which will just have been finished in writing tonight.
> >
> > Shouldn't people who were not involved in the individual creation
> > processes at least get two weeks to review the final work
> > to make up their mind before entering a voting period ?
>
> That's probably the thing that bothers me most, as well. That and the
> fact that once I've cast my vote, I can't change it - so I really have
> to defer voting until the last minute, in case someone comes up with a
> compelling argument for one proposal that I hadn't thought of.
>

OK, so it seems you're unhappy that you only have a day to vote since you
can't change your vote ...


>
> I made a deliberate choice *not* to get involved in the discussions
> while the proposals were being prepared, because I find it far too
> easy to get an impression of a proposal from an early draft and then
> misjudge the proposal by not updating my views once it's updated. I
> don't want to do that with this decision, as it's pretty important (!)
> and so I've held off reading any of the proposals until they are
> announced as final. And yet, it looks like once they are announced,
> there's a possibility that people will start voting and then excuse
> themselves from discussion (because once you've voted, there's no
> point discussing any further). I can read them, but may not have
> anyone to discuss them with once I've done so... That doesn't sound
> like an ideal way of reaching consensus.
>

... but then you don't like that people can vote over two weeks because you
don't want discussions to occur while people can vote to force them to
participate in discussions? I might be missing something, but these two
issues seem contradictory, especially since we can't exactly force people
to not talk about this while voting is open. :)

[I'm going to reply to MAL here as well which is a bit awkward, but it
would have been smoother on Discourse ;) ]

>
> It seems like we're completely skipping the review phase of the
> regular PEP process and going straight from PEP writing to
> a vote:
>
> https://www.python.org/dev/peps/pep-0001/#id38
>
> which is odd given the importance of this decision and also
> odd compared to normal democratic procedures where laws are
> first crafted, then put through parliament for discussion and
> then decided upon after everyone has had a reasonable chance
> for review.
>

I don't know if it's really fair to say the review phase is being skipped.
It's not like anyone *must* vote tomorrow and so there really isn't any
time to think things over. You still have the rest of the month to review
the PEPs and place your vote. It's no different than someone following a
PEP closely, forming their opinion along the way, and then when the final
version lands replying with an opinion immediately even if the PEP delegate
isn't making a final decision for another two weeks.


> Having said all that, it's not like the decision making process will
> be changed at this point, so I think that we're going to have to
> accept it, flaws and all, as it stands.
>

It's totally flawed because we all can't agree on anything. :) For example,
remember that the voting was going to allow people to change their vote
initially in the first version of PEP 8001, but more people wanted the vote
to be private than have the ability to change their vote, so the compromise
was swapped for preferring privacy.

And as for the two week voting time, that was discussed and generally
agreed to way back when the initial timelines were discussed in August and
I believe again in September (both here and at the dev sprints). And people
specifically wanted more than a week to be able to vote, so it was
deliberate to have the voting open for as long as it is (actually if I
remember correctly a proposal for voting time was to be from when PEPs
finalized until the end of November, which would have put it at about six
weeks).
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