[META-SIG] Terminating comatose SIGs

[Andrew Kuchling]

Guido van Rossum <guido@CNRI.Reston.Va.US> wrote:
>I went through the various SIG archives, mostly at Findmail, and the
>following sigs are clearly in coma (and have been for a long time).  I

	I can't disagree with any of those listed.  Web-sig doesn't
really have a purpose these days; cgi.py is written, doesn't need
extending at the moment, and other tools like Principia and Magnet's
internal stuff are developed elsewhere.  The locator SIG may have a
spurt of life for a bit thanks to Aaron's new FAQ wizard setup, but it
could equally well be discussed on psa-members or the main list.  The
pattern SIG hasn't excited much interest; the plot-SIG argued about
design issues for a while and then died away.

>One could argue that there's still hope for the plot-sig and
>thread-sig. Still, the trend is unmistakable -- they can be given an
>extension of three months to get their act together.

	As I said on a recent Locator-SIG message, the Python
community has a nasty habit of starting a design discussion, aiming
for the sky (an optimal solution that is everything to all people);
discussion runs for a while and then dies without an implementation or
even any code.  The GUI-SIG has followed that course repeatedly, as
has the Locator-SIG; Plot-SIG appears to have succumbed to that same
illness now.

	I subscribe to the worse-is-better philosophy of releasing
some lame product quickly, and then subsequently improving it until
it's no longer lame.  Perhaps a SIG shouldn't be started until there's
some existing body of code for the SIG to work with; that imposes the
minimum requirement that someone had to care enough to write code in
the first place...


	Andrew Kuchling
	amk@magnet.com
	http://starship.skyport.net/crew/amk/

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