Something that just struck me: one of my main misgivings with government (real ones:-) is that they never seem to plan for evaluating the actual effect of their decisions. And then I realized that we’re doing exactly the same…
In a few weeks we’ll have selected a new governance model, would it be a good idea if we also plan for an evaluation? Sufficiently far in the future (2 or 3 years?) so that we actually have the chance to get the new model working and see how well it performs in the real world. But if we already state the intention to do such an evaluation (which could simply be a re-vote under whatever regime is in place then) then (a) we won’t forget and (b) it isn’t interpreted as a vote of no confidence if anyone wants to suggest it at such a time…
I don’t know if anything formal is necessary, but I don’t think it would be bad to reflect on how our eventual decision turned out to decide if we want to try to change it. PEP 8011 actually says that “If this PEP is chosen, it is not meant to be the only governance model for Python going forward”, so it already is indirectly open to reconsideration if chosen.
Agreed, I think making things too formal is something we should resist - we’ve done well this far with a relatively informal structure and there’s no obvious reason to change that. But making a note for ourselves to look back on how the decision went seems like a good idea.
Does Discourse have any sort of “Remind me” feature that will auto-create a new topic after a period of time? That might be a nice way to trigger the discussion
An evaluation is a great idea, but like others I’m a bit puzzled by the question of how to arrange it effectively. Like, if we wanted to be all formal about it we could totally put a line into any of the PEPs saying “12 months from now, a committee will be formed to evaluate and report on …” blah blah etc., but IME volunteer-driven projects just… don’t do stuff like that. (Non-profits have actual legal requirements to make certain reports annually, and the F/OSS non-profits I’ve seen up close have sometimes really struggled with this.)
If we want something informal, I guess any of us could just make a calendar reminder, and then in 12 months make a post like “Hey, it’s been 12 months, how’s everyone doing?”
I definitely didn’t want to suggest a formal procedure and all that (I’m not very fond of formalities:-). Really more like the informal suggestions here, but possibly with a target date set (so that when people suggest it when the time comes around it doesn’t surprise everyone).
Personally I would be totally unworried about sending in email in 6 or 12 months just noting that it seemed like a good idea to check after X months, without any further justification. Maybe linking to this thread as it stands? But I’d approach it as a more open-ended “how’s everyone doing?” kind of thing, not like “ok time to vote on whether this was all a mistake!”.
