[Python-ideas] A bit meta

[Guido van Rossum]

On Sat, Jan 30, 2016 at 1:17 PM, Barry Warsaw <barry at python.org> wrote:
> For example, many years ago I missed a discussion about something I cared
> about and only accidentally took notice when I saw a commit message in my
> inbox.  When I asked about why the issue had never been mentioned on
> python-dev, I was told that everything was hashed out in great detail on the
> tracker.  I didn't even realize that I wasn't getting email notifications of
> new tracker issues, so I never saw it until it was too late.

That might have been a lapse in judgement for that particular issue?
Without the tracker we'd be utterly inundated in minutiae on
python-dev. Occasionally I see folks redirecting a discussion from
python-ideas or python-dev to the tracker, and vice versa, and in
general I think the line is pretty clear there and people do the right
thing.

Honestly I wouldn't want to replace python-dev for decisions, but I
know several core devs left python-ideas because it was too noisy for
them, and I think plenty of stuff on python-ideas would be totally
appropriate for some other forum (I often mute threads myself). My
rule is that if something's PEP-worthy it needs to be mentioned on
python-dev, even if most of the discussion is elsewhere (whether it's
a dedicated SIG or a specific tracker on GitHub). It seems reasonable
that python-dev should be involved early on, when the discussion is
just starting, and again close to the end, before decisions are cast
in stone. But I'm glad we don't have to do everything there.

> I've seen other topics discussed primarily on G+, for which I have an account,
> but rarely pay attention too. I don't even know if it's still "a thing".

Fortunately, G+ is dead. "Social media" as it's now known just isn't a
good place for these type of discussions.

> Maybe everyone's moved to Slack by now.  How many different channels do I have
> to engage with to keep track of what's happening in core Python?

A lot of stuff used to (or still does) happen in IRC, which (as you
know) I utterly hate and can't stand. But chat systems still serve a
purpose, and if people want to use them we can't stop them. But we can
have a written standard for how to handle major decisions, and I see
nothing wrong with the standards we currently have written up in PEP
1. I don't think whatever is being proposed here is going against
those rules (remember you're reading this in python-ideas, not
python-dev :-).

> This isn't GOML and I'm all for experimentation, but I do urge caution.
> Otherwise we might just wonder why we haven't heard from Uncle Timmy in a
> while.

Tim seems to have great filters though -- whenever someone says
"float" or "datetime" (or "farmville" :-) he perks up his ears.

-- 
--Guido van Rossum (python.org/~guido)