I think we can use a category dedicated to discussions of ideas and possible implementations of new third-party Python libraries.
Currently we have the Ideas category but it is meant for discussions of changes to Python itself, and oftentimes when a topic gets feedbacks like “this feature should be made into a third-party library first/instead” the thread turns into a discussion of a new third-party library, which is really off-topic for the category.
And then there’s the Help category, but it seems to be too noisy for those (such as myself) more interested in subscribing to (with a higher level of notification setting) discussions of new ideas.
Postings to this new cateogory should be about an idea or a partial/near-completed implementation of a new third-party library seeking feedbacks from the community.
This comes up periodically, eg Meta: Lifetime of an idea. 1, 2 & 3 and has never really gotten traction. If you create a half-way house for “ideas that aren’t good enough for the Ideas section but that you don’t want to post in the General section”, all you do is create twice as many arguments about which category something should go in.
The new category will be for ideas that do not involve making changes to Python from the get go, while the arguments we see about which category something should go in are usually from posts that are first thought to involve changes to Python. So with that guideline clearly defined I don’t see how the new category will incur many if any of such arguments.
You think there WON’T be arguments? What, you’ve never been in an internet debate before??
Seriously though - have a read of the thread I linked to, and any others on similar subjects, and you’ll see that you can’t handwave this away so easily.
I’ve read through that thread before, which is really about separating current Ideas posts, i.e. proposals to making changes to Python, based on bakedness, and the problem there is that it’s always highly subjective how baked an idea is. So we continue to have Ideas posts that range from a 1-sentence wish to a fully fleshed out proposal+reference implementation, which I now think is OK.
What I’m proposing here instead is to have a separate category for ideas not based on bakedness, but based on whether changes to Python are involved.
While there may still be arguments later in a “project incubator” thread in the reverse direction about whether it should be moved to Ideas because maybe a syntax change would better serve the purpose, at least from the get go the OP has a place to frame the idea as a third-party library.
