On Jan 15, 2008, at 02:12:50, Ronald Chmara wrote:
On Jan 13, 2008, at 5:58 PM, Stanislav Malyshev wrote:Voting to achieve what?Fair decisions in a simpler, effective and right manner (and not discutable, ideally).I do not consider "fairness", whatever that could mean, having anything to do with technical decisions regarding PHP,I vote that PHP should get a pony! Who's with me!Voting is good in that it helps express the wills and desires *of those who vote*. Some of those opinions may be wrong, insane, or silly, but it provides a means to evaluate an opinion professed by a group, rather than as an individual.IMSHO, for PHP, voting is an *informative*, not *conformative*, process.Let's take two arguments, with different heritages, authors, and origins.Suoshin patches. mysql_session patches.We could have 100% voted desire to make all of these HEAD, and still say "No."Voting expresses voter *will*, not outcome. For the former and latter, these are feature, not technical, requests.neither I think counting votes is the process that allows to arrive to a decision best for PHP.That's why votes influence, but do not determine, outcomes.
Now that's a crock of shit.Related to PHP it has been my experience that the vote is just a whitewash as the outcome has already been predetermined or that the votes of only a select few are used as the basis for a decision.
If your going to put something to a vote like electing a president or including a feature in PHP and you decide against the people's choice then your basically saying that you'll only accept the votes as long as it coincides with your decision, yeah a really nice demonstration of false democracy and deception in action.
People are not interested in voting on the off-chance that maybe you'll accept the outcome of the vote, they expect you to meet the obligations for the outcome of that vote.
Basically you've confirmed it's not a vote, it's a suggestion and the suggestion wont bear any weight to the outcome if you don't believe the suggestion has any merit or that you don't like the suggestion.
If you propose a list of options to be voted on then accept the outcome of the vote, if there is no chance that an option will be accepted despite it's vote then the option should not be proposed, then you don't have to worry about insulting your integrity and disappointing the people because their choice is not accepted.
I personally know very little about some areas of PHP code,It's a big club. We should get T-shirts.and it make little sense that my vote would carry the same weight as opinion of the person that wrote and maintains the code. There's nothing in arithmetic majority of people that makes any decision better, more effective, more right and not disputable. Thousands of people can be wrong as easy as one person can be, and one person can be as right as a thousand.True, that.For those not versed in US-style democracy, the way we do it here is to elect (theoretically) somebody with a clue. Their one "clue" easily vote trumps thousands.The thing is, is that, well, if Rasmus, Zeev, Andi, Wez, *whoever* has a big voice, stopped listening or went insane or *whatever*, we have to have a way of fixing such a case.
These are guaranteed by the rules and policies written for and established by the people which can be used as a footprint, the PHP king is elected and he can be impeached along with an array of PHP representatives who represent the different areas of PHP, the representatives submit what the people of their territory or area of expertise want, the house which is the collection of these representatives votes based on the arguments offered before the house and anything passed by the house becomes effected or is then passed along to a vote of the people, that is democracy.
Also, vast majority of PHP users never read this list and would know nothing of any votes held or announced here, so representing that as a poll reflecting opinion of a millions-wide PHP community makes no sense whatsoever.
Of course not, there are a significant number of end users who believe that the PHP dev team is nothing more than a collection of pompous assholes based on their limited minor experiences and staying away means less headaches and aggravation in ones life.
The community is successful only because those involved believe the project has merit and a portion of the end users are grateful for the community of developers because they have a better understanding of it's inner-workings and value.
If you want to create a true public voting environment then add something to the website that allows for people to come and vote, a single vote based on a captcha and email address vote confirmation to prevent manipulation of the voting system and accept the outcome of the vote.
You can also create an e-mail voting system, they send an email and a confirmation requesting a reply is sent, anything that does not get a confirmation reply or is undeliverable is probably invalid and the vote doesn't count.
There are endless possibilities to a public voting system but the key would be in awareness, if the people don't know then they wont participate and there's no guarantee that even if they do know that they'll participate, that old adage comes to mind, you can lead a horse to water but you can't make it drink.
Agreed. -Ronabop -- PHP Internals - PHP Runtime Development Mailing List To unsubscribe, visit: http://www.php.net/unsub.php
-- Dale
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