[Numpy-discussion] NA masks in the next numpy release?

[Nathaniel Smith]

On Sun, Oct 23, 2011 at 12:53 PM, Charles R Harris
<charlesr.harris at gmail.com> wrote:
> On Sun, Oct 23, 2011 at 12:54 PM, Matthew Brett <matthew.brett at gmail.com>
> wrote:
>> I think this email might be a plea to the numpy steering group, and to
>> Travis in particular, to see if we can use a discussion of this series
>> of events to decide on a good way to proceed in future.
>
> Oh come, people had plenty to say, you and Nathaniel in particular.  Mark
> pointed to the pull request, anyone who was interested could comment on it,

Ah, this helps answer my initial question -- I can see how you might
have thought things were more resolved if you thought that we were
aware of the pull request and chose not to participate. That's a
reasonable source of confusion.

But I (and presumably others) were unaware of the pull request,
because it turns out that actually Mark did *not* point to the pull
request, at least in email to either me or numpy-discussion. As far as
I can tell, the first time that pull request has ever been mentioned
on the list is in Pauli's email today. (I did worry I might have
missed it, so I just double-checked the archives for August 18-August
27, which is the time period the pull request was open, and couldn't
find anything there.)

(Also, for the record, I'd ask that next time you want to make sure
that there has been sufficient discussion on a controversial feature
that has "strong and reasonable opposition", you make more of an
effort to make sure that the relevant stakeholders are aware...?)

> Benjamin Root did so, for instance. The fact things didn't go the way you
> wanted doesn't indicate insufficient discussion. And you are certainly
> welcome to put together an alternative and put up a pull request.

In the interests of not turning this into a game of procedural
brinksmanship, can we agree that the point of pull requests and such
is to make sure that code which ends up in numpy releases generally
matches what the community wants? Obviously the community has not
reached a consensus on this code and API, so I'll prepare a pull
request to temporarily revert the change, and we can work from there.

-- Nathaniel