+1 (not exactly sure how the vote would work, so at this point just an indication of support)

On 22.03.2019 16:40, Victor Stinner wrote:

Oh. I forgot to mention that I offer to mentor Stéphane once he would become a core dev for 1 month for help him to deal with his new responsibilities. I would require him to ask me before merging any PR during the mentoring.

Victor

Le ven. 22 mars 2019 à 16:34, Victor Stinner vstinner@redhat.com a écrit :

...

Hi,

Julien Palard and me (Victor) propose to promote Stéphane Wirtel as core developer. We open a vote until March 31 (~one week). "[A promotion] is granted by receiving at least two-thirds positive votes in a core team vote and no veto by the steering council." https://www.python.org/dev/peps/pep-0013/#the-core-team

Some of you already met him at Pycon US or EuroPython.

Stéphane is contributing to Python since 2014. He fixed bugs in various parts of the code, but also implemented some nice features:

• -d option of "python3 -m http.server -d DIRECTORY" to serve a specific directory using Python builtin HTTP Server
• --fast and --best options on gzip CLI: "python3 -m gzip [options] file"

(Julien told me that he frequently uses "python3 -m http.server -d DIRECTORY" to read the Python documentation :-))

In my experience, Stéphane *likes* getting review and is fine to make any change on his code. It's not an issue to work with him, it's more the opposite :-) For example, it doesn't get mad if one of his PR is rejected ;-) (I'm saying that because *I* sometimes get mad about that, sorry for being emotional :-))

He got 57 commits merged into the master branch of Python: authored 46 commits + co-authored 1 commit + 10 commits before Git ("Patch written by Stéphane Wirtel").

He organized a Python conference at FOSDEM 5 times in a row (between 80 and 800 persons per year) and got a PSF Community Service Awards in June 2016 for that: "Stéphane Wirtel for his work organizing a Python User Group in Belgium, for his continued work creating marketing material for the PSF, for his continued outreach efforts with spreading the PSF's mission." https://www.python.org/community/awards/psf-awards/#june-2016

He is also helping to organize EuroPython, by working on the website or being a volunteer on-site.

He gave a lot of Python talks all around the world at many Pycon (France, EuroPython, Canda, Italy, Ireland, UK, San Sebastiàn, Slovakia, Ukraine) and at FOSDEM (Belgium). For example, he gave talks about Python internals (bytecode, parser), and on Python development workflow and Pull Requests.

He is always volunteer to help the Python project, not only the code. For example, he is a committer on the developer guide (devguide).

He is helping other contributors get their bugs fixed or to get their changes merged. He participated to not less than 218 PR: ping the right core dev who can review/help, test manually to validate and provide good feedback, propose enhancements, etc. Sometimes, he just says "Thank you for your contribution" which is IMHO a good practice for a healthy community :-) (we don't do that often enough!)

Stéphane is involved in Python for 5 years. To be honest, he should have been promoted earlier, but I (Victor) wasn't sure to promote him myself because I know him too well, and so I wasn't objective about his work. But well, now it's time, and Julien is supporting his promotion as well ;-)

Links:

• https://wirtel.be/
• https://twitter.com/matrixise

Julien and Victor

-- Marc-Andre Lemburg eGenix.com

Professional Python Services directly from the Experts (#1, Mar 22 2019)

...

...

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We discussed this and we think an anonymous vote on discuss.python.org is probably best for this sort of thing.

Victor, did you want to do the poll or would you prefer I set it up?

On Fri, Mar 22, 2019 at 10:01 AM Brett Cannon brett@python.org wrote:

On Fri, Mar 22, 2019 at 9:33 AM M.-A. Lemburg mal@egenix.com wrote:

...

+1 (not exactly sure how the vote would work, so at this point just an indication of support)

I've started a discussion with the council to see how we may want to handle it.

-Brett

...

On 22.03.2019 16:40, Victor Stinner wrote:

...

Oh. I forgot to mention that I offer to mentor Stéphane once he would become a core dev for 1 month for help him to deal with his new responsibilities. I would require him to ask me before merging any PR during the mentoring.

Victor

Le ven. 22 mars 2019 à 16:34, Victor Stinner vstinner@redhat.com a écrit :

...

Hi,

Julien Palard and me (Victor) propose to promote Stéphane Wirtel as core developer. We open a vote until March 31 (~one week). "[A promotion] is granted by receiving at least two-thirds positive votes in a core team vote and no veto by the steering council." https://www.python.org/dev/peps/pep-0013/#the-core-team

Some of you already met him at Pycon US or EuroPython.

Stéphane is contributing to Python since 2014. He fixed bugs in various parts of the code, but also implemented some nice features:

• -d option of "python3 -m http.server -d DIRECTORY" to serve a specific directory using Python builtin HTTP Server
• --fast and --best options on gzip CLI: "python3 -m gzip [options]

file"

...

(Julien told me that he frequently uses "python3 -m http.server -d DIRECTORY" to read the Python documentation :-))

In my experience, Stéphane *likes* getting review and is fine to make any change on his code. It's not an issue to work with him, it's more the opposite :-) For example, it doesn't get mad if one of his PR is rejected ;-) (I'm saying that because *I* sometimes get mad about that, sorry for being emotional :-))

He got 57 commits merged into the master branch of Python: authored 46 commits + co-authored 1 commit + 10 commits before Git ("Patch written by Stéphane Wirtel").

He organized a Python conference at FOSDEM 5 times in a row (between 80 and 800 persons per year) and got a PSF Community Service Awards in June 2016 for that: "Stéphane Wirtel for his work organizing a Python User Group in Belgium, for his continued work creating marketing material for the PSF, for his continued outreach efforts with spreading the PSF's mission." https://www.python.org/community/awards/psf-awards/#june-2016

He is also helping to organize EuroPython, by working on the website or being a volunteer on-site.

He gave a lot of Python talks all around the world at many Pycon (France, EuroPython, Canda, Italy, Ireland, UK, San Sebastiàn, Slovakia, Ukraine) and at FOSDEM (Belgium). For example, he gave talks about Python internals (bytecode, parser), and on Python development workflow and Pull Requests.

He is always volunteer to help the Python project, not only the code. For example, he is a committer on the developer guide (devguide).

He is helping other contributors get their bugs fixed or to get their changes merged. He participated to not less than 218 PR: ping the right core dev who can review/help, test manually to validate and provide good feedback, propose enhancements, etc. Sometimes, he just says "Thank you for your contribution" which is IMHO a good practice for a healthy community :-) (we don't do that often enough!)

Stéphane is involved in Python for 5 years. To be honest, he should have been promoted earlier, but I (Victor) wasn't sure to promote him myself because I know him too well, and so I wasn't objective about his work. But well, now it's time, and Julien is supporting his promotion as well ;-)

Links:

• https://wirtel.be/
• https://twitter.com/matrixise

Julien and Victor

-- Marc-Andre Lemburg eGenix.com

Professional Python Services directly from the Experts (#1, Mar 22 2019)

...

...

...

Python Projects, Coaching and Consulting ... http://www.egenix.com/ Python Database Interfaces ... http://products.egenix.com/ Plone/Zope Database Interfaces ... http://zope.egenix.com/

---

::: We implement business ideas - efficiently in both time and costs :::

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---

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Le ven. 22 mars 2019 à 19:45, Brett Cannon brett@python.org a écrit :

We discussed this and we think an anonymous vote on discuss.python.org is probably best for this sort of thing.

Victor, did you want to do the poll or would you prefer I set it up?

Sure, done: https://discuss.python.org/t/vote-to-promote-stephane-wirtel-as-a-core-dev/1...

Julien, Steve, Marc: Please vote again there.

I would suggest everybody to add a short message to "explain" their vote.

For the poll, I chose:

• Type: Single Choice
• Results: Always visible (the 2 other choices are: "When closed" and "On vote")
• Choice 1: Promote Stéphane Wirtel
• Choice 2: Don't promote Stéphane Wirtel
• [ ] Show who voted (unchecked = anonymous)
• [ ] Automatically close poll (unchecked = I will close manually the poll early April 1st)

I got:

[poll type=regular results=always]

• Promote Stéphane Wirtel
• Don't promote Stéphane Wirtel [/poll]

I can modify the poll if needed.

Maybe Choices could be labelled differently, but I had no better idea, sorry :-)

Victor

On Fri, Mar 22, 2019 at 2:14 PM Victor Stinner vstinner@redhat.com wrote:

Le ven. 22 mars 2019 à 21:56, Victor Stinner vstinner@redhat.com a écrit :

...

For the poll, I chose:

• Type: Single Choice
• Results: Always visible (the 2 other choices are: "When closed" and "On vote")
• Choice 1: Promote Stéphane Wirtel
• Choice 2: Don't promote Stéphane Wirtel
• [ ] Show who voted (unchecked = anonymous)
• [ ] Automatically close poll (unchecked = I will close manually the poll early April 1st)

FYI technically, it's possible to change your vote while the vote is still open. I tested to see if it's possible: yes it is :-)

Do voters have to justify their vote? Or is each voter free to justify or not their vote? (add a message)

I don't think people have to justify their vote. We don't ask that of anyone else in any other votes that we hold.

Le ven. 22 mars 2019 à 22:42, Brett Cannon brett@python.org a écrit :

I don't think people have to justify their vote. We don't ask that of anyone else in any other votes that we hold.

Ok, I'm fine with that.

I wanted to ask explicitly, since votes on python-committers mailing required to post a change. It's a change compared to old way to vote.

--

By the way, is the Steering Committee ok with the proposed duration for the vote (we proposed 1 week)? I'm asking because the duration was never really discussed... In the past, sometimes Guido closed immediately a vote by saying "ok, we got enough +1, <candidate> is promoted", the duration of the vote wasn't announced in advance.

I like to announce a deadline so people can take their time before voting, if they want, to see the trend. The ones who missed the deadline cannot complain since it has been announced from the start ;-)

Maybe it's better to let the Steering Committee close the vote. Honestly, I'm not sure of what is the best :-D

Victor

Night gathers, and now my watch begins. It shall not end until my death.

On Fri, Mar 22, 2019 at 4:17 PM Victor Stinner vstinner@redhat.com wrote:

Le ven. 22 mars 2019 à 22:42, Brett Cannon brett@python.org a écrit :

...

I don't think people have to justify their vote. We don't ask that of anyone else in any other votes that we hold.

Ok, I'm fine with that.

I wanted to ask explicitly, since votes on python-committers mailing required to post a change. It's a change compared to old way to vote.

--

By the way, is the Steering Committee ok with the proposed duration for the vote (we proposed 1 week)?

I'm personally fine with it, but we haven't formally discussed this. But I doubt anyone else on the council will care so just assume a week is fine. :) There's no need to rush a resolution but there's also no need to drag it out either, and a week guarantees at least one weekend for those that only check their open source emails once a week.

I'm asking because the duration was never really discussed... In the past, sometimes Guido closed immediately a vote by saying "ok, we got enough +1, <candidate> is promoted", the duration of the vote wasn't announced in advance.

It's unfortunately a deficiency in PEP 13 as it's not specified in https://www.python.org/dev/peps/pep-0013/#membership . It's probably something we should fix in PEP 13 by following https://www.python.org/dev/peps/pep-0013/#changing-this-document but which also lacks a time frame for votes. :)

I like to announce a deadline so people can take their time before voting, if they want, to see the trend. The ones who missed the deadline cannot complain since it has been announced from the start ;-)

Go with a week since the poll opened on discuss.python.org.

Maybe it's better to let the Steering Committee close the vote. Honestly, I'm not sure of what is the best :-D

No one does. :) We're all trying to figure this out as a group as we adjust to our new governance situation.

-Brett

Victor

Night gathers, and now my watch begins. It shall not end until my death.

Le ven. 22 mars 2019 à 23:21, Terry Reedy tjreedy@udel.edu a écrit :

...

Sure, done: https://discuss.python.org/t/vote-to-promote-stephane-wirtel-as-a-core-dev/1...

Do votes automatically get posted here, or does creator have to remember to do so?

Now, please only use the poll on discuss.python.org to vote. This thread is now deprecated... or pending deprecated, I'm now confused ;-)

I cannot add votes made on the mailing list to the discuss.python.org poll. For the few who already voted in this thread, you have to vote again in the poll.

Victor

Night gathers, and now my watch begins. It shall not end until my death.

Le sam. 23 mars 2019 à 00:23, Victor Stinner vstinner@redhat.com a écrit :

Sorry, I'm not used to Discourse and another question came to my mind...

Does someone know if voters will remain anonymous when the vote ends? If it's not the case, voters should be warning before they vote.

Sub-question: do Discourse admins see who voted what? It seems like they don't. I prefer to be fully transparent from the start :-)

Victor

Night gathers, and now my watch begins. It shall not end until my death.

On Fri, Mar 22, 2019 at 7:45 PM Brett Cannon brett@python.org wrote:

We discussed this and we think an anonymous vote on discuss.python.org is probably best for this sort of thing.

Victor, did you want to do the poll or would you prefer I set it up?

(just my 2 cents unrelated from this specific nomination per se) I agree that when voting for *people* (core-devs, Steering Council members, etc.) the vote should be private because it leads to a more neutral and honest outcome. Publicly voting "no" has a higher cost both for the voter and the candidate: voters may be tempted to vote "yes" or abstain just to not look bad or cause antipathy. Anonymous preference is a way to exclude the human factor and promote quality. That's how it's done in real life and has been done for the Steering Council elections, so I think we should do the same for core-dev nominations, and possibly also incarnate this in a PEP. It would be nice if such a PEP would encourage the person who proposes the nomination to provide a detailed description of the candidate (links to main past contributions, candidate's areas of interest, GIT statistics, etc.), so that the voters can express a better preference. On the other hand, I think votes for technical decisions (if any) are better if kept public, and possibly always accompained by a reason (otherwise abstention is better).

Giampaolo - http://grodola.blogspot.com

[Victor Stinner] ...

By the way, I'm also surprised to see that on 11 "+1" votes, only 3 added a comment. I'm not sure of the "value" of "+1" without a comment. Does the voter know Stéphane and/or saw his work. How did the voter make their decision? In the past, these comments helped me to vote when I wasn't sure about a candidate. For example, if someone showed a strong support, and I trust the voter, I follow their vote (well, taking a decision is more complex than that in practice, but I hope that you see my point).

I voted +1. I haven't had significant interaction with Stéphane but certainly recognized the name and had a favorable impression. But of my own knowledge, I have no strong opinion either way. So my +1 was driven primarily by the strong endorsement you gave.

Was that worth writing up? Not to me ;-) It's probably unrealistic to imagine than _anyone_ in the future will be well known to a majority of then-current core devs. I only want to hear from those who _do_ have a strong opinion based on significant experience.

So I'm disappointed that I've seen nothing from those who voted -1. In the absence of an explicit message, I can assume a +1 voter is happy enough with what the original proposer said. But in the absence of any -1 voter explaining their reasoning, I have no idea what to make of it.

I must say, I'm a bit surprised by the discussion around the voting process and the candidates.

First, we've been complaining about lack of core devs for a long time. Now we have two great candidates with proven track record of contributing to Python and people complain again. As a small group, we need to attract more capable people and such push back is not a very productive way of doing so.

Second, as in any vote, no one should feel pushed to comment or even argue for his or her opinion on a candidate. People nominating a candidate are the ones who need to write this up, but not the other group members. A vote to accept someone to a group is a personal opinion and should be respected as such.

If people feel they need more guidance, they should ask the ones who nominated the candidates - in public or in private. Because the candidates themselves cannot comment (at least not on this list; don't know about discourse), such discussions have to be moderated by the nominating parties with care.

-- Marc-Andre Lemburg eGenix.com

Professional Python Services directly from the Experts (#1, Mar 25 2019)

...

...

Python Projects, Coaching and Consulting ... http://www.egenix.com/ Python Database Interfaces ... http://products.egenix.com/ Plone/Zope Database Interfaces ... http://zope.egenix.com/

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On 25.03.2019 16:20, Steve Dower wrote:

On 25Mar2019 0217, M.-A. Lemburg wrote:

...

I must say, I'm a bit surprised by the discussion around the voting process and the candidates.

First, we've been complaining about lack of core devs for a long time. Now we have two great candidates with proven track record of contributing to Python and people complain again. As a small group, we need to attract more capable people and such push back is not a very productive way of doing so.

To be clear, my pushback (on Discourse, since I can only send email from an actual laptop these days but can participate over there from my phone) has been against vague nominations, not the individuals themselves.

I'm *very* concerned about the perception of commit rights being "awarded" rather than being a added responsibility specific to CPython.

I'm not sure where you got that perception from. The two candidates both want to actively contribute to Python.

It's possible that the nominations did not emphasize this enough, but that's an issue with the nomination text, not with the person being nominated.

Yet, the public perception of the discussion is that the persons are not qualified enough and that's definitely not going to have a productive effect on getting more people helping.

Nominees should be willing to take on extra responsibility, and nominators should be making clear that the nominee is at least somewhat proven to be ready for it. Nominations for being a good contributor to other projects makes no sense, and nominations without a specific role or focus area are also vague enough that I don't see it leading to longer standing commitment.

I don't necessarily want to formalize a specific set of rules or things that people have to do in order to become a core developer. But I do want to avoid creating a culture of "this person is nice and built a nice library let's give them commit rights". The PSF already recognizes people for these contributions, which is the right way to do it.

If the core committers (via the SC) also want to offer a vote of thanks to a community member, then sure, we can do that. But keep it separate from "we trust you to modify the language/runtime/core tools without oversight".

...

If people feel they need more guidance, they should ask the ones who nominated the candidates - in public or in private. Because the candidates themselves cannot comment (at least not on this list; don't know about discourse), such discussions have to be moderated by the nominating parties with care.

Isn't this what's been happening? It certainly has been on Discourse.

Not really. I'm not talking about some moderator having to step in to take action. I'm talking about the nominators actively supporting the discussion by fixing mistakes in the nomination, proxying and adding more information (since the candidates cannot speak for themselves) and helping to clarify misconceptions.

Asking people who have voted -1 or +1 to publicly tell the world why they did so is not helpful in this respect, since it just creates bias. What people, who are unsure how to vote, really need, is more information, not bias.

FWIW, it'd be great if there was a way to add someone to a single thread so they _could_ post there - Stefan in particular has had to email a few of us off-list to respond to our queries (though in doing so has proven his commitment, at least as far as I'm concerned, so overall it probably worked out better :) ).

Indeed, it would be helpful to at least allow the candidate to post to discourse (technically, it wouldn't be hard to give them temporary access to this ML either). Having people discuss about yourself and not being able to participate puts the candidates into a very odd and vulnerable position, esp. when the discussion is public.

-- Marc-Andre Lemburg eGenix.com

Professional Python Services directly from the Experts (#1, Mar 25 2019)

...

...

Python Projects, Coaching and Consulting ... http://www.egenix.com/ Python Database Interfaces ... http://products.egenix.com/ Plone/Zope Database Interfaces ... http://zope.egenix.com/

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On 25.03.2019 23:58, Steve Dower wrote:

On 25Mar2019 1503, M.-A. Lemburg wrote:

...

On 25.03.2019 16:20, Steve Dower wrote:

...

To be clear, my pushback (on Discourse, since I can only send email from an actual laptop these days but can participate over there from my phone) has been against vague nominations, not the individuals themselves.

I'm *very* concerned about the perception of commit rights being "awarded" rather than being a added responsibility specific to CPython.

I'm not sure where you got that perception from. The two candidates both want to actively contribute to Python.

It's possible that the nominations did not emphasize this enough, but that's an issue with the nomination text, not with the person being nominated.

That's literally what I said.

Great, so we're on the same page.

...

Yet, the public perception of the discussion is that the persons are not qualified enough and that's definitely not going to have a productive effect on getting more people helping.

I don't know where you got *this* from. I haven't seen any criticism of the candidates themselves - just questions that ought to have been answered very easily in the nomination (and were answered almost immediately upon request).

I'm reading both this list and discourse (in mailing list mode). Perhaps those comments were mostly on the ML.

...

...

Isn't this what's been happening? It certainly has been on Discourse.

Not really. I'm not talking about some moderator having to step in to take action. I'm talking about the nominators actively supporting the discussion by fixing mistakes in the nomination, proxying and adding more information (since the candidates cannot speak for themselves) and helping to clarify misconceptions.

Um, that's exactly what happened? I don't understand why you're saying it didn't (unless someone's edited the history over there between me reading it and you reading it).

The post for Stéphane on discourse still reads the same as the original posting on discourse and this ML. The last edit was on March 22.

...

Asking people who have voted -1 or +1 to publicly tell the world why they did so is not helpful in this respect, since it just creates bias. What people, who are unsure how to vote, really need, is more information, not bias.

This is illogical. Knowing how and why certain people voted is useful information when you know that person (and it's also why we generally use options like -1, -0, +0, +1, and sometimes +/-100 ;) ). Without this added information, the *only* thing we have is bias, and I don't think we have a big enough group to average out individual bias in such important decisions as this.

I guess we have a different understanding of bias, then :-)

I prefer to base my votes and opinions on available information much more than other people's votes and opinions. Using their votes to cover up for lack of information does not make me feel comfortable, so I try to get more information or abstain.

In the current case, I do know both candidates well enough to give them my vote.

-- Marc-Andre Lemburg eGenix.com

Professional Python Services directly from the Experts (#1, Mar 26 2019)

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Python Projects, Coaching and Consulting ... http://www.egenix.com/ Python Database Interfaces ... http://products.egenix.com/ Plone/Zope Database Interfaces ... http://zope.egenix.com/

::: We implement business ideas - efficiently in both time and costs :::

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On 26.03.2019 18:54, Antoine Pitrou wrote:

Le 26/03/2019 à 09:58, M.-A. Lemburg a écrit :

...

...

...

Asking people who have voted -1 or +1 to publicly tell the world why they did so is not helpful in this respect, since it just creates bias. What people, who are unsure how to vote, really need, is more information, not bias.

This is illogical. Knowing how and why certain people voted is useful information when you know that person (and it's also why we generally use options like -1, -0, +0, +1, and sometimes +/-100 ;) ). Without this added information, the *only* thing we have is bias, and I don't think we have a big enough group to average out individual bias in such important decisions as this.

I guess we have a different understanding of bias, then :-)

I prefer to base my votes and opinions on available information much more than other people's votes and opinions. Using their votes to cover up for lack of information does not make me feel comfortable, so I try to get more information or abstain.

The reason I'd like to know why people voted -1 is not because I plan to vote like them (I can vote on my own - or, in these cases, not vote). It's that I'd like to know what kind of objections people have against those particular contributors becoming core developers.

That's a fair reason, but you have to consider a couple of side effects:

• These forums are public, so whatever negative someone writes is going to stay associated with the candidate.

• The person writing the negative feedback may see a backslash as well and again, because it's public, have this associated with him or her.

• The vote may still be in favor of signing up the candidate as core dev and the person publishing the negative feedback will have to work together with the candidate.

It's usually best to keep such discussions private or at least confined to a smaller circle of people to work around all of the above issues.

Cheers,

Marc-Andre Lemburg eGenix.com

Professional Python Services directly from the Experts (#1, Mar 26 2019)

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Python Projects, Coaching and Consulting ... http://www.egenix.com/ Python Database Interfaces ... http://products.egenix.com/ Plone/Zope Database Interfaces ... http://zope.egenix.com/

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On 26.03.2019 05:20, Raymond Hettinger wrote:

...

On Mar 22, 2019, at 8:34 AM, Victor Stinner vstinner@redhat.com wrote:

Julien Palard and me (Victor) propose to promote Stéphane Wirtel as core developer. We open a vote until March 31 (~one week). "[A promotion] is granted by receiving at least two-thirds positive votes in a core team vote and no veto by the steering council." https://www.python.org/dev/peps/pep-0013/#the-core-team

For some reason, I can't vote on discourse. The message is "you can vote because you can't post in this topic." So please add this post to the tally.

On the plus side, I've enjoyed working with Stéphane Wirtel and think he is a great person and Python enthusiast. That said, I think we should wait. The contributions thus far have been very light weight. Also, I've not seen active, critical decision making on the bug tracker that would demonstrate an understanding of what to approve and what not to approve.

Doesn't a good core dev have to have two main characteristics:

1. be passionate about Python and 2. be knowledgeable in a field of expertise ?

Decision making is something you grow into with experience and you first have to get a feel for the group you're making decisions for. I don't believe we should make this a number one criterion for voting someone in.

Nominating someone too early puts us all in an awkward position. It's no fun to vote with a -1. If the nomination has been allowed to mature, this could be a more positive experience for everyone. We shouldn't have just one person spewing out nominations and doing it prematurely (imo). We had that situation happen in the PSF and it quickly degraded as people started nominating their friends some of whom had only light associations with Python. In the end, that situation necessitated a reorg to where the new standard was zero. We already have a number of core-devs who are core devs in name only, having never made a commit or actively participated in developing the core.

Sorry, Raymond, but the above comment on the PSF isn't quite accurate. At the time when the PSF was invite only, we tried very hard to grow the organization and luckily reached a point where we no longer had the much too comfortable situation of everyone knowing everyone else.

It's just natural that people then had to start voting in people based on nomination text only knowledge. While I know that there were many discussions around this at the time (much like we have now on this list), the reorg did not come out of frustration about the way we dealt with the nominations, but instead out of the desire to be an open organization, rather than an elite club.

Now, the situation with the core devs is a bit different, since we are actively working together on a project and people put a lot of trust into us. The bar definitely is higher and we cannot simply allow anyone to join.

I agree with your point about letting nominations mature, but I'm also concerned about the lack of active core devs and the push back the two nominations are getting. Here we have two very candidates who are very passionate about Python and would like to help, yet we have nothing better to do than to criticize their readiness.

We do have to make up our minds: either we do want this group to grow or we don't. If we do, we should probably come up with more structure for nomination texts to make existing group members feel more comfortable about voting someone in based on those, instead of relying on other group members votes and only amplifying them.

Socially, there are two other concerns. One concern is unevenness -- the bar was very high for some people and very low for others. It really seems to matter who nominated you and who your friends are. The other concern is formation of cliques of friends who approve each other's proposals, but falling into groupthink because of light experience and low diversity of ideas.

Yes, there is a risk and yes, some core devs got in easier than others (think of the need for speed sprint participants), but I think all this is manageable.

I don't think that vote amplification is the right way, though, for much the same reasons you state above, hence my push back against that strategy.

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