Hi Eli,
Am 11.01.2016 um 15:45 schrieb Eli:
On 1/10/16 8:15 AM, Dennis Birkholz wrote:
I would really like to understand the rational behind anonymous voting
in the PHP internals context. Votes for RFCs should be purely based on
technical reasons and whether the language change would benefit the
language in the long run or not. I see no reason why such a vote
should be confidential.
I will chime in my quick thoughts here Dennis, as to a reason I could
see for doing so ... (Not going to argue if 'this reason is good
enough' or not. But it is a valid reason)
If a person does not stand behind his/her opinion for a technical
change, I am not sure if that person should be allowed to decide the
future of the language.
So the reason is not because someone isn't willing to 'stand behind
their opinion'. It's purely about being harassed (perhaps beleaguered
is a better terminology to not confuse this with 'illegal harassment')
for having said opinion. I was one of the people who, due to my vote on
STH, immediately started being beleaguered for holding my views and for
voting as much. My inbox/twitter/IRC/etc filled with how I was ruining
PHP and ruining people's lives. Old friendships were threatened to be
ended. And my entire week ended up becoming full of responding to these.
Instead of getting to be an informed voter, go in and cast my vote, and
await for the results to be displayed ... I become embroiled into the
arguments, back-n-forth, defense, and dealing with the beleaguering
comments.
Yes, I stood behind my opinion. But it has made me gun shy about
voting in the future on any contentious topic, because I know I need to
set aside the time to 'deal with that'. Yet those contentious topics,
are the ones where we should be encouraging as many people as possible
to vote, to make sure that we have a broad spectrum of views and that it
is the 'will of the community' as it were. And (at least in the US) is
against the idea in general of voter confidence. Where you are free to
hold your belief without needing to be slammed for it publicly.
I don't think voting on an RFC is like electing your government. I would
compare it to how a House of Representatives works. And at least here in
Germany, they vote publicly except when electing people (e.g. the
Chancellor).
So anyway, that's one reason. Whether it's a good reason or not is up
to others to decide.
... But it may be preferable to hide the Person<->Vote table until the
vote is over. That would provide protection against harassment to win
someone over and change his/her vote.
Unfortunately that won't stop the above situation. While it would stop
the idea of campaigning someone to change their vote (which is perhaps
another reason to do it). It just means all the above issues would be
taking place post-vote, instead of during-vote.
I think a CoC or something similar should clearly state that this is
unacceptable behavior and we all expect that all disagreement is
expressed on the mailinglist in the discussion thread only in a
respectful way and that closed votes mark the end of such discussions
(besides actual implementation details of course).
Greets
Dennis
--
PHP Internals - PHP Runtime Development Mailing List
To unsubscribe, visit: http://www.php.net/unsub.php
