Happy to read your thoughts on this Nikita, I think you've drawn some good conclusions.
If I may add a thought or two: I wouldn't make any final decisions based on one experiment, especially a big RFC as this one. I think the GitHub discussion got extra attention because it was the first one, and because of the scope of the RFC. I would try to have two or three more RFCs discussed on GitHub, maybe smaller ones? Second, there are more things we can do in order to keep the main thread on topic. Three things come to mind: - We could add community guidelines, clearly stating that RFC comments should stay on topic - People could be appointed to moderate the comments, allowing contributors to focus on the code instead of community management - Conversations on GitHub can be locked as a last measurement. Repository members can still comment. I fear that separating the main discussion from the PR will cause unnecessary confusion: important, generals remarks could be made on the "main thread", and I think there's value in keeping these remarks together with everything else. Kind regards Brent On 6 Sep 2019, 16:48 +0200, Nikita Popov <nikita....@gmail.com>, wrote: > Here are my own thoughts on how the pull request discussion for union types > went... > > I think the main takeaway for me is that inline comments (on specific lines > in the RFC) were really invaluable. Each comment thread discussed a > specific issue and most of them have resulted in a direct improvement to > the RFC. > > Generally there was a lot of discussion of specific technical details that > we very rarely see in RFC discussions. Current RFC discussions on the > mailing list tend to be rather high level (which is fine in itself), with > nobody ever discussing the details (which is very bad). > > Thinking back to https://wiki.php.net/rfc/engine_warnings, I think that RFC > could have really benefited from this discussion medium. While the mailing > list discussion ended up talking circles around more or less one single > question (undefined variables), pretty much none of the other parts of the > RFC have seen so much as a comment. I'm sure that there would be a lot more > discussion regarding specific classifications if this went up as a pull > request. > > Another nice thing is that it's possible to mark a comment thread as > resolved, once the RFC has been adjusted to address the comments. That way > you don't have to see issues that were already addressed (though you can if > you like). > > Having thumbs-up and thumbs-down reactions to comments was also helpful to > judge whether some comment represents a minority opinion or not, something > that is notoriously hard with current mailing list discussions (which are > almost dominated by "negative" opinions which mysteriously don't show up in > voting results). > > However, while the inline comments were pleasantly insightful, the same > cannot be said for the top-level comments on the pull request. The majority > of them was borderline off-topic. While some in principle interesting > discussion happened there, it simply didn't belong in the RFC thread for > union types. The top-level comments also suffered from a lack of threading > -- I would have been less bothered about tangential discussions if they > were threaded. (To be fair: I use gmail, so I don't get threading on the > mailing list either.) > > If this kind of discussion behavior is representative, then I would suggest > a workflow alone the following lines... > > * RFCs are submitted as PRs on GitHub, but must be announced on the mailing > list. > * The PR description should have a fat warning that top-level comments > belong on the mailing list. We can mark all top-level comments on PRs as > "off-topic" as a matter of general policy. > * Top-level commentary stays on the mailing list. > > This is a shift from what I originally had in mind (completely moving the > RFC process to GitHub), towards providing a way for more detailed and > specific feedback on the RFC text. > > Regarding GitHub as a 3rd party. I think there are a few things to > considered: > * We're already very heavily reliant on GitHub. Most of my day-to-day > interaction with PHP core development is via GitHub and most of the > day-to-day decisions also happen there. Only the major stuff everhits this > mailing list. > * The RFC repo would of course be hosted on git.php.net as usual and only > be mirrored to GitHub. > * GitHub would not be the exclusive venue for RFC discussion. All RFCs are > still announced on internals and the top-level discussion can and should > still happen here. > > Disclaimer: I'm trying to draw conclusions here from an experiment with a > sample size of 1, which may not be representative. Union types are a pretty > significant proposal (and also the first one to be on GH), and other, > smaller proposals might well have different discussion dynamics. > > Regards, > Nikita > > On Thu, Sep 5, 2019 at 12:22 PM Côme Chilliet <c...@opensides.be> wrote: > > > Le jeudi 5 septembre 2019, 12:04:55 CEST Brent a écrit : > > > > Huge "no" from me on using github for discussing RFCs. > > > > > > Care to elaborate why? The majority seems to like it. Though I am also > > curious about Nikita's experience with it, as he is the one having to > > process the feedback. > > > > Because the PHP project should avoid depending on a privately owned > > centralized service for its technical discussions, and should not encourage > > (some would say force) people to use such platforms. > > > > PHP is already on github but it’s only a mirror, the main git repository > > is at git.php.net . > > > > Côme > > > > -- > > PHP Internals - PHP Runtime Development Mailing List > > To unsubscribe, visit: http://www.php.net/unsub.php > > > >
