DIP1028 - Rationale for accepting as is

[Johannes Loher]

On Friday, 22 May 2020 at 12:47:04 UTC, matheus wrote:
> On Friday, 22 May 2020 at 12:28:56 UTC, rikki cattermole wrote:
>> Although it seems an improvement has been made to how he needs 
>> to respond to the DIP assessment. It should also include a 
>> statement from Atila as well given his position.
>
> One thing that need to be clear and for I read it was not 
> remotely answered from Walter is why this DIP process and 
> discussion exists if in the end like it or not it will be 
> incorporated.
>
> As an end user, I'd like to know if this language will be 
> guided by community or one person, because it seems the 
> "democracy" is very shallow right now.
>
> And again why waste time with this process plus 2 rounds of 
> discussion?
>
> I mean just do it and tell in this announcement section about 
> the feature.
>
> Matheus.

There is no democracy. The decisions are simply made by Walter 
and Atila.

 From my understanding, the purpose of the DIP process is to 
improve DIPs and find any potential flaws before a final decision 
ist made by the two language maintainers. However, how much of 
the review the maintainers take into account is their own 
decision.

In theory, this results in much higher quality DIPs and the 
chance of a DIP that actually makes it to the formal assessment 
stage to be accepted is a lot higher. It also seems to work quite 
well when the DIP author is not one of the language maintainers. 
 From my experience, the quality of those DIPs really has gone up 
by a lot. There is also a lively discussion about each DIP and 
the authors are actively participating. It is in their own 
interest to do so because getting feedback and addressing it 
increases the quality of the proposal which in turn increases the 
chance of the DIP being accepted.

If the author is one the language maintainers, this doesn't seem 
to work that well though. There is simply less motivation for 
them to do all of that because in the end, they can make the 
decision by themselves anyways. I am not saying that the language 
maintainers do this on purpose, it is simply a psychological 
effect. And the result can be seen very clearly when comparing 
review threads for DIPs from the language authors with review 
threads for DIPs from others.

In defense of the language authors, it has to be stated that the 
situation has improved quite a bit over time. Examples of this 
are how DIP1017 was handled or the fact that Walter now gave a 
reasoning for his decision regarding DIP1028 (even if only after 
being asked to do so). But unfortunately, sometimes it still 
really feels like DIPs from the language maintainers and DIPs 
from others are handled quite differently by the maintainers.