[python-committers] And Now for Something Completely Different

[Doug Hellmann]

Excerpts from Paul Moore's message of 2018-07-20 13:14:49 +0100:
> On 20 July 2018 at 12:57, Victor Stinner <vstinner at redhat.com> wrote:
> > Hum. Let me try to explain my point differently. Currently, some
> > people don't read PEPs just because at the end, only the single BDFL
> > vote counts. What's the point of spending hours (if not days) on
> > reading a long PEP and the long discussion on mailing lists, if your
> > count doesn't count?
> 
> My suspicion is that *most* people who don't read PEPs don't do so
> because they don't have the time, not because they don't believe that
> their opinion will matter. In actual fact, the evidence from many
> threads is that people are more than happy to express their opinion
> even though they haven't read the PEP. So I doubt that giving people
> more power to affect the result will make little practical difference.
> 
> > Now imagine that all votes count. I expect that
> > people will spend more time on reading carefully each PEP and follow
> > more closely discussions since they will be de facto more involved in
> > the decision process.
> 
> In contrast, I would imagine that people would continue to discuss
> PEPs in exactly the same way that they currently do, so the result
> would be that the votes are based more on partially-informed opinion
> and "gut feeling". Certainly some people will work harder to provide
> an informed vote, but I doubt that will be true in the majority of
> cases. Worst case, people will feel a responsibility to vote, but
> won't have any more time than they do right now so they'll vote with
> limited information simply because "it's expected of them" to vote.
> 
> I suspect that the reality will be somewhere between these two extremes.
> 
> Paul

In other communities that use this form of consensus approval for
design changes I have seen folks who do not have time or interest
to dig deeply into a proposed change learn to trust others who have
the time, interest, and expertise. The team comes out stronger as
a result of that built-up trust.

Doug