Eric V. Smith wrote:
In addition, I find it hard to believe someone couldn't find a sponsor for a well-written PEP. I'm happy to sponsor such a PEP, even if I think it will be rejected. Rejected PEPs serve a useful purpose, too, if only to point to when the same issue comes up in the future.
Do most of the other core developers also share this perspective? Even though PEPs were not intended to be intimidating, they definitely can be for those who are less familiar with the process. I can imagine that many people would think that a "sponsor" would mean fully convincing someone to be completely on board with their idea. As someone who only more recently began contributing to Python, my previous perception of PEPs were these monolithic technical documents that were well approved by the entire community. I'm slowly starting to see them more as simply being well structured proposals after having seen more of them. To many outside of the development community though, such as those proposing ideas, their impression of a PEP is probably based on the massive ones such as PEP 8. Although it was purely comical, I think PEP 401 helped me quite a lot to see them as less intimidating. PEP 581 is a good example of an actual approved one that's easily digestible.