On Wed, Sep 3, 2025, at 8:25 AM, Tim Düsterhus wrote: > Hi > > Am 2025-09-02 15:08, schrieb Tim Düsterhus: >>> 1) Reference of discussion in RFCs >>> >>> When I try to look into the discussions of older RFCs to find out why >>> they ended up the way they did, it’s not easy. You hardly can find >>> them. This is because they are often not referenced in the RFC itself. >>> >>> Going forward, would it make sense to make it mandatory to reference >>> '[Discussion]' and '[Vote]' in the RFC text itself? >> >> I'll make the requested adjustments and then follow up here on the >> list. > > I have made the change in the following commit: > https://github.com/php/policies/pull/23/commits/fdd28a322aa03ccc822d8f0ac3fa1d934a519a7e, > > added the link to the discussion of this very RFC to the RFC itself and > updated the changelog section. As this is a major change to the RFC, > the > discussion period will go for another 2 weeks from now. > > Given that the emails do not immediately become available in the > archives, I've used the “as soon as possible wording” with deadline for > the voting announcement and voting close respectively. While the RFC is > in progress, the threads should still be easy to find. The goal is to > preserve easy access after several months have passed, so I don't think > a super tight deadline is necessary as long as it happens eventually.
"If the proposal is a repeated discussion of an existing RFC, with or without modification, it MUST still be announced on the list for discussion." What does "repeated discussion" mean? Is that "I've taken over this old RFC and revised it", or "no one has commented on this RFC in the last month so now it has to be a new thread" or "I'm saying things that have already been said because I didn't read the list yet"? ----- The language for the "extending the discussion period" paragraph is highly clumsy and confusing. The existence of the last sentence to clarify it is evidence of that. I would recommend rewriting it. (I can offer suggestions if you're open to it.) Really, though... what is actually being proposed, and is not actually a widespread convention right now, is a policy of "the vote may start two weeks after the last substantive change." For some definition of "substantive." If that is the intent, it should just say that. And we should discuss directly if we actually want that requirement. ----- " Minor changes to the RFC text include adding new examples, updating existing examples, adding additional explanation or clarification, or any other changes that are not purely editorial." We must be working with different definitions of "editorial", because those seem editorial to me. ----- "Similarly RFC authors SHOULD NOT proceed with an announced vote if new discussion points are brought forward after the voting announcement." Any discussion point, or valid discussion points? For some definition of valid? This seems like an easily exploitable way to "hecklers veto" an RFC by never letting it go to a vote by just talking too much. As a concrete example, and not to pick on her but it's the first to come to mind, Juliette had a long response to the Property Hooks thread that came in a day before voting was to start, after multiple months of discussion. It didn't really add anything *new* to the discussion; it didn't point out any bugs in the design, just general unease with its extensiveness. Should that comment force a delay in the vote by its simple existence? I firmly think not. I would recommend at least adding "if new relevant discussion points are brought forward". Where "relevant" is at the RFC author's good faith judgement. However, some discussions just go around and around at length but go nowhere. The author should be able to put a pin in it and say "'nuf said, we're voting, that will resolve this question, vote no if you are on team X." Otherwise, again, we just keep talking forever. ----- I can easily see a mostly-run-its-course discussion thread that would be ready for a vote in early December, but that would then run into the holiday blackout period, so the authors delay the vote until mid-January. (I'm pretty sure I've done that before.) However, that could run into the 6-week fallow rule proposal. Should there be any sort of allowance for that, so that the mandatory blackout period doesn't force delaying an RFC even more? --Larry Garfield
