[Python-ideas] Adding `pathlib.Path` method that would send file to recycle bin

[Nick Coghlan]

On 5 January 2015 at 11:13, Steven D'Aprano <steve at pearwood.info> wrote:
> On Sun, Jan 04, 2015 at 11:01:08PM +1000, Nick Coghlan wrote:
>
>> For those curious as to "Why not the wiki?", a Sphinx project hosted
>> on a pull request capable service like GitHub, BitBucket or Kallithea
>> offers a much nicer workflow for reviewing of proposed changes,
>> together with an integrated issue tracker for submitting proposals for
>> updates (https://github.com/pypa/python-packaging-user-guide/ is the
>> project behind packaging.python.org, for example).
>
> The concept of "proposed changes" goes completely against the grain of
> community-managed content. Imagine if Wikipedia required you to make
> pull requests.

Wikipedia's typical equivalent of pull requests is when editors revert
a page to an earlier version and move the discussion of the proposed
change to an earlier version. This approach can be escalated to
*actual* pull requests when the editors lock a page to disrupt an
ongoing edit war.

The "anyone can publish by default" approach has the advantage of
significantly increasing editing throughput by streamlining the
handling of non-controversial cases. The downside as a reader is that
it achieves this by allowing a brief window where controversial
changes can be published without first establishing consensus, which
means you may be presented with inaccurate information on
controversial topics depending on when you check a page.

I think that model works well for the task of creating a collaborative
encyclopaedia (where "eventually accurate" is good enough for almost
all purposes, and lowering barriers to entry for casual contribution
of corrections is a high priority), but I don't believe it's
appropriate for the task of delegating the CPython core development
team's reputation and authority to other groups.

For that, a pre-commit review process, or a more explicit topic area
delegation (like the Python Packaging Authority handling
packaging.python.org), makes more sense to me: if we trust folks to
maintain a module or topic area *in* the standard library, we should
be able to trust them to provide reasonable and balanced
recommendations regarding applications and libraries that are
maintained *outside* the standard library.

Regards,
Nick.

-- 
Nick Coghlan   |   ncoghlan at gmail.com   |   Brisbane, Australia