On Apr 26, 2018, at 8:03 AM, Guido van Rossum <guido@python.org <mailto:guido@python.org>> wrote:

The way to calm discussions is to stop responding.

Hi Victor,

In the gentlest way that I know how, I commend you for considering the impact that emails have on PEP writers especially when "dogpiling" (i.e. folks jumping in without anything new to add to the discussion on a controversial issue). People are hard :( and wonderful :)

In my experience, people's actions (as Guido mentions) do more to calm things than technology. One slippery slope with a technical solution is that people then begin to game the technical system. Responding calmly, staying on topic by addressing the approach not the PEP writer, seeking to work toward a better solution than shooting down an idea, and slowing your response time are ways to calm things down and improve productivity. These concepts are well proven by the Harvard Negotiation project.

One constructive thing that we can do is to put yourself in the shoes of the PEP writer before pressing "send" and consider how you might "feel" if you received the message that you are about to send.

Warmly,

Carol

On Thu, Apr 26, 2018 at 4:02 AM, Victor Stinner <vstinner@redhat.com <mailto:vstinner@redhat.com>> wrote: Hi,

Since 2 or 3 years, I saw that that discussions on some PEPs get more and more emails every year. Maybe because Python became more popular? Openness is a Python quality, but shortly, the amount of emails becomes an issue, at least for the author of the PEP.

I counted the number of emails per day of the python-dev mailing list, using mbox archives available at: https://mail.python.org/pipermail/python-dev/ <https://mail.python.org/pipermail/python-dev/>

My script: https://github.com/vstinner/misc/blob/master/python/parse_mailman_mbox.py <https://github.com/vstinner/misc/blob/master/python/parse_mailman_mbox.py>

In March, python-dev got 246 emails with a maximum of 31 the 2018-03-21.

In April, the traffic was between 3 and 27 emails per day until the start of the chaos:

... 2018-04-17: 27 2018-04-18: 20 2018-04-19: 11 2018-04-20: 36 2018-04-21: 36 2018-04-22: 31 2018-04-23: 32 2018-04-24: 72 2018-04-25: 76 2018-04-26: 23 2018-04-27: 10

Current maximum: 76 emails received at 2018-04-25!?

I'm not sure that it's still possible to read carefully all emails to python-dev and write constructive replies. It seems like people are answering immediately, without reading past emails nor reading other emails sent the same day.

I'm also concerned by the general mood of the discussion. Are we still discussing arguments in polite way?

How can we calm down the discussion, and ask people to don't reply immediately but instead try to listen to the other people?

IHMO everybody had enough time to give their very important opinion (I wrote my own very important opinion, don't worry!) on python-ideas and then on python-dev. We are now turning around.

Can we give Chris more time to update his PEP? In my experience, the PEP is the most constructive tool to drive a discussion.

I chose to write to python-committers because I now fear that I would get too many replies on python-dev ...

Victor

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-- --Guido van Rossum (python.org/~guido <http://python.org/~guido>)

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Obviously, the issue is less the number of messages per month than the fact that most of them are about a single proposal :-)

Regards

Antoine.

Le 26/04/2018 à 17:10, Victor Stinner a écrit :

I computed stats since January 2017:

2017-01: Total: 220 msg; avg: 7.6 msg/day; max: 20 msg at 2017-01-18 2017-02: Total: 191 msg; avg: 7.1 msg/day; max: 27 msg at 2017-02-24 2017-03: Total: 240 msg; avg: 8.0 msg/day; max: 20 msg at 2017-03-03 2017-04: Total: 79 msg; avg: 3.0 msg/day; max: 9 msg at 2017-04-21 2017-05: Total: 281 msg; avg: 9.7 msg/day; max: 26 msg at 2017-05-24 2017-06: Total: 426 msg; avg: 14.2 msg/day; max: 80 msg at 2017-06-01 2017-07: Total: 253 msg; avg: 9.7 msg/day; max: 41 msg at 2017-07-17 2017-08: Total: 326 msg; avg: 12.5 msg/day; max: 40 msg at 2017-08-29 2017-09: Total: 548 msg; avg: 19.6 msg/day; max: 84 msg at 2017-09-06 2017-10: Total: 402 msg; avg: 14.4 msg/day; max: 49 msg at 2017-10-02 2017-11: Total: 942 msg; avg: 31.4 msg/day; max: 96 msg at 2017-11-06 2017-12: Total: 536 msg; avg: 17.3 msg/day; max: 67 msg at 2017-12-15 2018-01: Total: 504 msg; avg: 16.8 msg/day; max: 42 msg at 2018-01-05 2018-02: Total: 286 msg; avg: 11.9 msg/day; max: 31 msg at 2018-02-21 2018-03: Total: 246 msg; avg: 8.8 msg/day; max: 31 msg at 2018-03-29 2018-04: Total: 523 msg; avg: 20.9 msg/day; max: 97 msg at 2018-04-24

April 2018 is not yet the worst :-) November 2017 was an interesting month!

Victor

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Ah sorry, results were surprising, so I did more stats including python-ideas.

"PEP 572: 662 msg" is now the obvious winner. Congrats Chris Angelico for the new record!

python-dev + python-ideas, Jan 2017 - April 2018 :

vstinner@apu$ ./parse_mailman_mbox2.py python-dev/* python-ideas/* PEP 572: 662 msg PEP 550: 387 msg PEP 557: 177 msg PEP 567: 155 msg PEP 540: 140 msg PEP 554: 110 msg PEP 563: 106 msg PEP 505: 91 msg PEP 538: 80 msg PEP 553: 78 msg PEP 560: 72 msg PEP 552: 56 msg PEP 565: 49 msg PEP 562: 47 msg PEP 564: 46 msg PEP 549: 43 msg PEP 561: 42 msg PEP 544: 40 msg PEP 484: 28 msg PEP 467: 25 msg PEP 526: 24 msg PEP 559: 23 msg PEP 370: 23 msg PEP 574: 16 msg PEP 575: 14 msg PEP 556: 13 msg PEP 573: 12 msg PEP 545: 12 msg PEP 539: 12 msg PEP 551: 11 msg PEP 448: 11 msg PEP 548: 10 msg PEP 447: 10 msg PEP 103: 10 msg PEP 506: 9 msg PEP 489: 8 msg PEP 555: 7 msg PEP 511: 7 msg PEP 523: 6 msg PEP 543: 5 msg PEP 432: 5 msg PEP 510: 4 msg PEP 530: 3 msg PEP 490: 3 msg PEP 393: 3 msg PEP 541: 2 msg PEP 479: 2 msg PEP 468: 2 msg PEP 442: 2 msg PEP 568: 1 msg PEP 394: 1 msg Total: 2705 msg; avg: 53.0 msg/PEP

Victor

2018-04-26 17:25 GMT+02:00 Victor Stinner <vstinner@redhat.com>:

2018-04-26 17:13 GMT+02:00 Antoine Pitrou <antoine@python.org>:

...

Obviously, the issue is less the number of messages per month than the fact that most of them are about a single proposal :-)

Ok, I did statistics on emails with a subject which contains exactly "PEP xxx", since January 2017 to today. I'm not sure that it's reliable, since some people don't write "PEP xxx" in the subject.

vstinner@apu$ ./parse_mailman_mbox2.py 201*txt PEP 550: 284 msg PEP 572: 243 msg PEP 557: 176 msg PEP 567: 151 msg PEP 553: 78 msg PEP 538: 76 msg PEP 563: 75 msg PEP 554: 73 msg PEP 540: 62 msg PEP 552: 56 msg PEP 565: 49 msg PEP 564: 46 msg PEP 549: 43 msg PEP 560: 40 msg PEP 544: 40 msg PEP 505: 38 msg PEP 561: 31 msg PEP 484: 25 msg PEP 467: 25 msg PEP 562: 24 msg PEP 559: 23 msg PEP 370: 23 msg PEP 574: 16 msg PEP 526: 15 msg PEP 575: 14 msg PEP 556: 13 msg PEP 545: 12 msg PEP 539: 12 msg PEP 573: 11 msg PEP 551: 11 msg PEP 448: 11 msg PEP 548: 10 msg PEP 103: 10 msg PEP 489: 8 msg PEP 511: 7 msg PEP 523: 6 msg PEP 543: 5 msg PEP 432: 5 msg PEP 510: 4 msg PEP 530: 3 msg PEP 490: 3 msg PEP 393: 3 msg PEP 541: 2 msg PEP 479: 2 msg PEP 442: 2 msg PEP 568: 1 msg PEP 394: 1 msg

Total: 1868 msg; avg: 39.7 msg/PEP

According to my tool, Yury Selivanov holds the current record with the PEP 550 and 284 emails :-) Especially if you add the 151 messages of the PEP 567. (Where is the PEP 555 in my list?)

Victor