Re: [RFC] Clarify discussion and voting period rules

On Friday 29 August 2025 22:21:41 (+02:00), Tim Düsterhus wrote: > Hi > > The current policy regarding how RFC are discussed and voted on is quite dated and no longer > matches the current accepted practices of the RFC process. > > In the past there were several RFCs with a less-than-ideal course of discussion. Examples > include RFCs being rushed through the process by less experienced contributors who are unaware that > the two weeks of discussion is a *minimum* that can and often should be extended. In the weeks > leading up to the feature freeze RFCs are rushed even by more experienced contributors trying to > meet the deadline. This resulted in RFCs going to vote in an incomplete state, resulting in them > being declined, wasting time of everyone involved when a little more discussion could've made > the RFC succeed. > > I've thus written up a policy RFC to clarify the current policy regarding the RFC process, > to use less ambiguous language and to formalize some of the current of the currently followed > undocumented practices. Examples of those would be the heads-up email of an upcoming vote and the > announcement of any relevant change to the RFC text on the list, so that folks become aware of new > points to be discussed without needing to check the version history all the time. > > Please find the RFC at: > https://wiki.php.net/rfc/rfc_discussion_and_vote > And the PR at: https://github.com/php/policies/pull/23 > > As with all policy RFCs, the corresponding PR to the policies repository > will be the authoritative source of the proposal and the RFC (and > discussion) will only provide extra context. Please do not comment on > the PR (except for minor typographical or phrasing clarification > suggestions). For comments regarding the actual "policy" reply to this > discussion thread for proper visibility instead and I'll make sure to > incorporate them as appropriate. > > I intend to dogfood the proposed policy during discussion and voting of this RFC. Changes to > the PR will be considered changes to the RFC text. > > To spell it out explicitly: This email marks the official start of the minimum discussion > period of 2 weeks. > > Best regards > Tim Düsterhus > If there is a likely (favourable) misunderstatement of the two weeks, my first suggestion would be to double it to four weeks. This also has the benefit that it's close to a month so the rest of the days can be used to off/on-RFC maintenance. This should better reflect the monthly rhythm of the current practice release cadence (and some day to allow -- given better planning -- half the stable release cycle to six (instead of twelve) months). Just my two cents -- hakre