DIP Draft Reviews

[Jonathan M Davis]

On Thursday, September 6, 2018 4:49:55 AM MDT Mike Parker via Digitalmars-d-
announce wrote:
> On Thursday, 6 September 2018 at 10:22:47 UTC, Nicholas Wilson
>
> wrote:
> > Put it this way: DIP1017 should not go to formal without
> > change, as it did from draft to community (which I don't think
> > should have happened without at least some acknowledgement or
> > refutation of the points raised in draft).
>
> I always ask DIP authors about unaddressed feedback before moving
> from one stage to the other, and I did so with DIP 1017 when
> moving out of Draft Review. It's entirely up to the author
> whether or not to address it and there is no requirement for DIP
> authors to respond to any feedback. I would prefer it if they
> did, especially in the Post-Community stage and later as it helps
> me with my review summaries, but 1017 is not the first DIP where
> feedback went unaddressed and I'm sure it won't be the last.

Of course, what further complicates things here is that the author is
Walter, and ultimately, it's Walter and Andrei who make the decision on
their own. And if Walter doesn't respond to any of the feedback or address
it in the DIP, it all comes across as if the DIP itself is just a formality.
The fact that he wrote a DIP and presented it for feedback is definitely
better than him simply implementing it, since it does give him the chance to
get feedback on the plan and improve upon it, but if he then doesn't change
anything or even respond to any of the review comments, then it makes it
seem kind of pointless that he bothered with a DIP. At that point, it just
serves as documentation of his intentions.

This is all in stark contrast to the case where someone other than Walter or
Andrei wrote the DIP, and the author doesn't bother to even respond to the
feedback let alone incorporate it, since they then at least still have to
get the DIP past Walter and Andrei, and if the DIP has not taken any of the
feedback into account, then presumably, it stands a much worse chance of
making it through. On the other hand, if the DIP comes from Walter or
Andrei, they only have the other person to convince, and that makes it at
least seem like there's a decent chance that it's just going to be
rubber-stamped when the DIP author doesn't even respond to feedback.

I think that it's great for Walter and Andrei to need to put big changes
through the DIP process just like the rest of us do, but given that they're
the only ones deciding what's accepted, it makes the whole thing rather
weird when a DIP comes from them.

- Jonathan M Davis