If we don’t want this, I think it is pretty clear that the category description should be changed. The distinction that @fungi mentioned between “I want to change something (i.e., via my own work)” and “I want something to change (i.e., via requesting a change)” is a rather subtle shade of meaning to expect people to glean from the particular phrasing of the category description (“Would you like to change something in Python?”).[1]
That is a great point and I’ve wondered about it as well. I think having a clear list of FAQ reasons why an idea needs more work would make it easier for people to just say “Please see the pinned post for why this idea needs X”.
The problem you note, though, is likely another result of the same cause, namely a larger group of people participating in Ideas here compared to the old mailing list. If new people are reading posts here who didn’t read the old list, then ideas that rehash old ideas from the list really are new to those readers. So even people giving criticism on rehashed ideas are doing needless work, because they don’t realize their arguments may have been given years ago on the mailing list! I’m not sure what the solution to this other than what’s already been discussed, namely throwing up some gentle hurdles to nudge people to work on their ideas a bit more before posting.
That’s not to say the distinction itself is small, just that it requires an unusually precise reading of the text of the description. ↩︎
Ok, I think this is the central driver to this whole discussion.
As someone new to “the open source community” and who has been learning the ropes I’m sympathetic to both groups, those who want things from python and those who want to contribute to Python.
As for those who want things from python: They got a lot out of python without putting anything in. They just download python and get the result of decades of development work. They don’t know how python gets developed, or how few core developers there are for how much work there is to be done. In my opinion it’s very reasonable for them (again, recalling that these are people who may not be steeped at all in the culture of OSS, OSS contribution etc.) to pop into the python discourse ideas category and say “hey I have an idea for python”.
But immediately on the other hand, it’s very reasonable for folks here to say, “thanks for your idea, before we can discuss it you need flesh this out into a proper proposal satisfying our guidelines”. It will then be important in the guidelines (I know this is being discussed in the other thread) to encourage users that their idea should be something that THEY plan to put a lot of work into. Or at the very least indicating that if they’re not willing to put work in then likelihood of eventual acceptance is super low.
So, again, the key to making it easy to teach someone the standards is to have a pinned post they can quickly be pointed to. And, importantly, the pinned post will include, among other things, encourage of the contribution mindset.
Said another way: I don’t think we can “administrative control” away the problem of “drive by proposals” or proposals from people just want something but don’t want to contribute. Instead we should just try to make it as effortless as possible to educate them.
edit: I’m gonna go start checking out the convo in the other thread more now.
Really? I thought that was the way you change nothing. That’s how
it is with most poprietary software. Unless you have a SLA, you
can’t even complain that it isn’t working properly. Most companies
seem to be of the opinion that, even after you pay them a
whack-ton of money on a regular basis, you still have no rights to
the software, and if their servers happen to be down today, you’re
out of luck.
Apologies, I was being snarky, didn’t intend to derail the
conversation.
Of course there is money that changes hands, but when you’re in the
trenches at a large corporation filing a feature request
(begging/pestering the software manufacturer) you likely don’t spend
a lot of time thinking about the fact that there’s some PHB several
layers above you stamping cheques from a ledger to cover the
contract with that third party, unless word trickles down to you
from time to time that you’ve gone over budget. Similarly the people
exchanging funds are too many levels removed from the technical
detail of the proposals to have much idea what it’s all about save
for some vague line item with a (comparatively small) number
adjacent.
From the user’s perspective, they tell the software manufacturer
“this would be nice” and they may eventually get back a response
asking to please provide more detail so that the sales engineer can
draft a sensible change proposal (after checking that their support
contract is up to date, and maybe having a few good laughs with the
developers about yet another confused customer request).
If this separation is at the core of the issue, then this can be a non-deniable effortlessly-determinable separation factor.
Maybe this sort of split into 2 different categories be beneficial?
And posts in either group that are deemed to be wasting time of others just get moved to “Help” (regardless whether one is willing to do work or asking others to do it).
Group 3. Currently uncertain, but it would be nice to know if they are willing to work on it themselves and would naturally find its place in Group 1 or Group 2.
I am now sceptical of my initial proposal of segregating by % baked. I think this is hard to quantify and I believe there are exceptions. If I try to put myself in coredev’s shoes I think there would be some ideas that are 1% baked, but if a person is willing to work on it and I like it, I would not move it to help. And similarly, some ideas could be 50% baked, but on such wrong premises that it is just wasting time of others.
EDIT:
At least a compulsory checkbox when creating a new thread in ideas. Even by not being a coredev this information would change how I react to it.
Paul has already said that these posts belong in Python Helpperiod:
A template is too prescriptive and won’t be filled in properly, renaming Python Help isn’t going to fix that and editing the description of Ideas won’t be able to go into enough detail.
That leaves the idea pinned post as the only viable solution that makes it easier to explain what’s wrong with a post.
But as you yourself pointed out, that’s only the opinion of one core developer. My word is not law, and I don’t want it to be. The Python community works by consensus (mostly).
And I have asked for this conversation to be suspended until the other one is settled.
Most sections have pinned posts, Ideas doesn’t and is the second most frequented section, so a pinned post makes sense on its own regardless of this discussion.
And as I said before, implementing a repressive policy (voluntary moving ideas where they will have less visibility) without disclaiming it is absurd, so at a bare minimum the criteria that make a post good should be explained.
@pf_moore I’m glad if there is no consensus about moving ideas out of Ideas. But there seems to be a consensus, I believe, about what makes an idea good. So let’s post that.
I heard people say that, but I checked again and I didn’t see it. Where can I find it ?
I’m +1 on renaming Ideas → Proposals
The current naming scheme is confusing.
I also favour the proposal in this thread to create a category for half-baked ideas, and require other (non-OP) users to ‘boost’ threads up into Ideas.
I don’t think many threads would get boosted up to Ideas/Proposals, and so it would work as a good filter. At the same time it wouldn’t feel as insulting as strongly suggesting that people should post ideas in the Python Help category.
Incidentally, I hope it’s not rude to revive this topic. I got a warning:
Revive this topic?
The last reply to this topic was 8 months ago. Your reply will bump the topic to the top of its list and notify anyone previously involved in the conversation.
Are you sure you want to continue this old conversation?
but this topic is still relevant, and it would also feel rude to open a duplicate topic.
keep the current PEPs category to discuss posted drafts of Python Enhancement Proposals
add a Proposal Preparation category between the two
Most suggestions posted to Ideas would never get further than the forum. Simpler decent ideas could still be turned directly into feature requests in the CPython issue tracker (reviewers will request preparation of a PEP if they feel the idea is too complex to be adequately covered by a simple feature request).
“Proposal Preparation” would then be a place where:
folks with more complex ideas that had received positive feedback on Ideas could post seeking a PEP sponsor if they haven’t already found one
folks working on any proposal (whether via a feature request or a draft PEP) could request further feedback on next steps that they should be taking
That approach does imply that the “feature request wish list item” posts would be considered on-topic for the Ideas category though, which is what makes it a controversial suggestion.
The warning is based on the assumption that even participants in the old thread may have forgotten the details (or even the gist) after a long period of time, so a better way to resume the discussion is to start a new thread that links back to the old one (together with any other related threads) and summarises where things got to and what (if anything) has changed since then.
It would be nice if that “Are you sure?” prompt gave an explicit suggestion of what to do instead, though.
Note that AFAIK, this thread has never been relevant - because the moderators of this website explicitly said that they don’t care about the decisions reached here and would have other discussions in some form. In the time since this (and related thread) happened, no public communication on this topic has happened (outside of the guidelines, which don’t directly address the issues raised here).
I am not really sure what to make of this. My best guess is that they are fine with the status quo and we don’t really have an ability to counteract this decision.
That was my first thought as well, but it feels weird once you remember that the second P in PEP stands for “Proposal”.
“Proposal Preparation” (or the shorter “Proposal Prep”) was just the first name that occurred to me that emphasised the more meta nature of the new category - the new category would mostly be compensating for the fact that PEPs now need a sponsor, and many potential PEP sponsors find the Ideas category too high volume to want to follow it directly. Extensive discussions of the ideas themselves would remain the territory of Ideas and PEPs (with threads being bounced back to Ideas if a proposal isn’t mature enough for sponsorship).
“Proposal Advice” might be another way of framing the concept.
I’m not sure what the solution to this other than what’s already been discussed, namely throwing up some gentle hurdles to nudge people to work on their ideas a bit more before posting.