Preventing another 1028

[Bruce Carneal]

On Thursday, 28 May 2020 at 13:01:43 UTC, IGotD- wrote:
> On Thursday, 28 May 2020 at 00:05:19 UTC, Bruce Carneal wrote:
>> DIP 1028 is unsound.
>> DIP 1028 is deeply unpopular.
>> DIP 1028 is ridiculous.
>>
>> How do we lessen the likelihood that DIPs like 1028 are 
>> accepted in the future?
>>
>> DIP 1028 survived veto because the DIP author had a very low 
>> bar to jump over; he only had to convince one person that 
>> silently and globally calling extern(C) safe was sane.  Here 
>> are some ways to raise that bar:
>>
>> 1) Appoint an at-large language maintainer (LM) that steps in 
>> whenever either of the two LMs author a DIP.
>>
>> 2) Appoint an "emeritus" LM that can veto DIPs but is not 
>> required to actively approve them.  Andre?
>>
>> 3) Increase the number of LMs.
>>
>> 4) Some combination of the above.
>>
>> If you have other, preferably simple, ideas on how to improve 
>> the DIP process, please chime in.  We may hit on something 
>> that could actually work.
>>
>> If the LMs refuse amendment, and the governing docs provide no 
>> relief, DIP process dysfunction will remain a "vote with your 
>> feet" issue (the disaffected bleed away, growth stagnates, the 
>> community becomes ever more cynical and withdraws from DIP 
>> commentary, ...).
>>
>> Finally, the elephant in the room: The DIP process would work 
>> much much better if Walter could somehow learn to communicate 
>> effectively in the forums.  Crucially, Walter often says that 
>> he believes he's answered a concern when the other, often 
>> highly respected, party most definitely believes he has not.  
>> Evidently it requires the patience of Job and the clarity of 
>> Timon to get through to Walter.  Even that is not always 
>> enough.
>
> I think one of the biggest problems is the expectations of the 
> management model. DIP 1028 has issues where a lot of people 
> disagreed and valid criticism, yet it was accepted on the first 
> round. Is this a community development model? Perhaps D should 
> go towards a committee model instead. This might be a better 
> model for Walter and those who has a clear vision of how D 
> should evolve, despite unpopular changes.

The duopoly model has strengths and weaknesses as do others. In 
the case of 1028 the duopoly model was abused.  We no longer had 
2 experts looking out for the community, we only had one, Atila.  
We can fix that in the future by altering the DIP process.  I 
have proposed such a modification to Mike.

Per email with Mike other modification proposals are welcome and 
can be submitted in this thread.

Side note: I think Mike has done a very good job.  It's the DIP 
process itself that could use some help.