Hi all, I'm writing about an issue that I think is causing substantial harm to the Sage community: the only current mechanism we have for resolving a disagreement is to call a vote on this email list. There are certainly times where this is an appropriate response, and I think it's still reasonable for policy disagreements or major decisions, but I would like to create an alternative resolution process that doesn't require emailing a list with 2578 members.
The need for such a process is highlighted by several recent disputes; see #36694 <https://github.com/sagemath/sage/pull/36694> and #35403 <https://github.com/sagemath/sage/pull/35403> for example, but there are others. The particular case I would like to address is where there is a general consensus, but one person (or a few people) disagree. Here is a proposed policy, which I am happy to revise: If there are at least twice as many developers in favor of a change as there are opposed (which may include the author of a PR), then any developer may set the PR to positive review and those opposed should not set it back, as long as both of the following conditions are satisfied: * it has been at least one week since an initial objection was raised, * all of the participants being counted in favor have commented on the PR since the initial objection. Of course, consensus is preferable, and this policy would not relieve us all of the responsibility to make persuasive arguments in favor of our positions. But I think we need a mechanism of this kind when consensus can't be reached. Also note that an objector is welcome to attempt to bring others into the discussion on their side if they remain firmly opposed. I hope that others can suggest improvements to the idea above, and remind everyone to keep the discussion positive and civil. I plan to call a vote on whatever proposal comes out of our discussion. David -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "sage-devel" group. To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to sage-devel+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. To view this discussion on the web visit https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/sage-devel/CAChs6_m7JdcQxLgCMREiNofGKUnzhKC%3D4AUtfVn3515mTE-M_g%40mail.gmail.com.
