[Edu-sig] meaning of +1

[Jeff Rush]

Dethe Elza wrote:
> On 7-Feb-07, at 10:59 AM, Brian Blais wrote:
> 
>> I am not asking an existential question about the meaning of the  
>> integer set, but rather what it means when someone writes in an
 >> email on this list, something like:
>>
>> +1
>>
> It's shorthand for "I approve and vote in favor of this direction,  
> proposal, critique, or whatever.
> 
> Variations include -1 (don't approve, vote no), +0 (vaguely approve,  
> but don't really care), -0 (vaguely disapprove, but not willing to  
> fight over it), +1000 (I really, really care deeply about this and  
> want it), -1000 (this is a really bad idea that I think will harm the  
> community), etc.

Dethe, thanks for documenting this for me.  I hope you don't mind but I've 
just clipped your text as a legend for a vote we're taking at 
pycamp.python.org over a name change.

Brian, knowing this code is rather important.  During the talks selection 
process for this year's PyCon, the reviewers were supposed to use this code to 
indicate their degree of support for a talk.  Unfortunately, this was implied 
and no formal meaning of the codes was established.  So those who use it a lot 
on the Python lists followed Dethe's meanings, and others of us used the 
layman's understanding of +1 is for, +2 is strongly for, etc. and -1 is 
against, etc. and scratched our heads when we was a +0 or -0.  Then when they 
were tallied, it was believed that those who voted -1 were strongly against a 
talk when actually they were just not thrilled, inappropriately removing talk 
contenders.  When this was discovered there was no time to revote so manual 
interpretations/debates were used.

Next year we're going to define the codes a bit better for reviewers.  So 
learn the codes...

-Jeff