[python-committers] Timeline to vote for a governance PEP

[Paul Moore]

On Sun, 4 Nov 2018 at 15:25, Steve Dower <steve.dower at python.org> wrote:
> For example, right now, I'm leaning towards 8013, 8010, 8016, 8011,
> 8012, 8015, 8014. But since some are still in flux (particularly 8016),
> that could change. And my core rationale is basically how likely we are
> to be able to fill the roles created by the model.

As one example of my confusion here,
https://www.python.org/dev/peps/pep-8016/ is currently a 404. So where
are you seeing something you can express a preference on? Presumably
you're looking at the raw data in github?

I have limited time, and I feel like we were promised a deadline after
which we could review what was being proposed, and discuss the
proposals in a public forum. After that, there would be a vote. But at
this point in time, I'm confused about:

1. When the proposals will be finalised and published.
2. Where the discussion(s) will be taking place.

PEP 8001 says that the vote will take place in the 2 weeks between 16
Nov and 30 Nov. PEP 8000 states that the following proposals exist:

PEP 8010 - The BDFL Governance Model
PEP 8011 - Python Governance Model Lead by Trio of Pythonistas
PEP 8012 - The Community Governance Model
PEP 8013 - The External Governance Model
PEP 8014 - The Commons Governance Model
PEP 8015 - Organization of the Python community

but claims that 8010 and 8012 are placeholders - looking at the PEPs
themselves, this seems to be untrue.

I'd like to spend some time reviewing the proposals and understanding
the options we're being asked to vote on, but I do *not* want to waste
time reviewing proposals that are still in flux. How do I know when I
can do that? And where do I go to see what *other* people are saying
about the relative merits of the proposals? The topics on Discourse
seem to be limited to one proposal at a time - so I'm assuming they
are thrashing out details (that I don't really care about - I don't
have enough of a "high level" feel yet to want to get into that level
of detail).

I guess I am assuming here that a topic titled "PEP 8013: The External
Council Governance Model" is just about PEP 8013, and doesn't include
digressions and off-topic subthreads (such as "this is why I prefer
PEP xxx over PEP 8013"). I suppose I'm basing that on the fact that
the Discourse users are making a point that one of the advantages of
Discourse is that threads don't ramble like mailing lists do. In
reality, I'm suspicious - it seems to me that human nature is such
that discussions *do* digress, and go off topic. But again it's about
time - if Discourse is just as much a bunch of wide ranging
discussions as the mailing list is, I don't have time to follow all of
Discourse as well as all of the lists I follow, and I don't have the
time to learn how to manage and prioritise on Discourse (or at least,
whatever time I do have that I could use for that, I'd rather use to
better understand the governance proposals, as those are more
important!) In the end, I accept that "I don't have enough time to do
a good job" is something I have to accept and decide whether I abstain
from the vote, or skim and vote as best I can based on that. That's
something I can't expect help in deciding - but a little more clarity
on what's happening with the process would make it a lot easier for me
to make that decision myself.

Anyhow, this is probably a bit off-topic again. I don't know whether
anyone thinks I'm offering anything new here - I feel like I'm
explaining my concerns from another perspective, but maybe all that's
coming across is me going on about the same things over and over. If
so, I apologise. I'll do my best to assume that I've said my piece
now, and if nothing gets better then I'm just going to have to deal
with it, as my views have been heard and that's all I can expect.

Paul