Voting for PEP 308 (was Re: For review: PEP 308 - If-then-else expression)

[Erik Max Francis]

Roy Smith wrote:

> Fascinating.
> 
> Erik and myself read exactly the same thing and came to two completely
> different conclusions.  Erik is afraid Aahz is stacking the vote in
> favor of defeat.  I'm afraid Aahz is stacking the vote in favor of it
> being passed.

Could you explain why you think that the suggested vote process is
stacked in favor of the vote passing?  I explained (or at least tried
to) why I thought it seemed stacked against it passing; could you do the
same?

I'm surprised to hear someone suggest that it seems stacked in favor of
the passing, since the voting proposal starts with a no-confidence vote
that would affirmatively reject the proposition, and then and only then
does it consider possible implementations.  (The failure of the
no-confidence vote to pass would then, in the wording of the original
proposal, constitute a validation of a "threat to forever withhold
ternary conditionals."  That seems pretty loaded to me.)

He was even talking about a 2/3 or a 3/4 (!) supermajority on the
no-confidence vote right out of the gate!  How can that possibly be
considered stacking in favorite of _passing_?  I haven't been tallying
up, but from the jist responses so far, a three-quarters supermajority
requirement would almost guarantee a failure (certainly more than one
out of four people who have piped up have expressed displeasure with the
idea).  Two-thirds, maybe; simple majority probably.

But this all misses the point.  In my opinion, a vote tally should only
serve as a simple record of 1. whether people are in favor of a
conditional operator being added to Python, and 2. if so, which one. 
Such a vote should only serve as a guideline to Guido as to what the
community feels about it, and then (obviously) he will make the final
decision, as in good BDFL style, taking into account the results of the
votes (or not, should he deem them misguided).

This nonsense about required supermajority no-confidence votes seems to
miss what should be the real goal of such a vote, which is simply to
provide Guide with data about what the Python community feels about the
PEP.

-- 
 Erik Max Francis / max at alcyone.com / http://www.alcyone.com/max/
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 Laws, rules, principles, effects, paradoxes, etc. in physics.