Proposal to increase the required majority for all RFCs

Good evening, Given the recent controversy on the 64-bit patch vote, and after some discussions on IRC[0] with some others, I think we should amend the current voting rules[1]. Currently only 50%+1, a simple majority, is required to pass ‘non-language changes’. However, I feel that this is too small of a hurdle to pass. Under this rule, contentious changes can pass despite a very thin majority. The rationale seems to be that non-language changes have less broad effect and hence don’t need wide approval. However, changes which don’t affect the ‘language’ can still have wide-ranging effect and be very problematic. It is also a quite vague requirement, as it is not always clear what change affects the ‘language’ and what doesn’t. Hence, I propose that we require a supermajority of 2/3 to pass RFC votes. This system is currently used for ‘language’ votes, but I feel it ought to extend to everything. This a much bigger hurdle to climb over than only a simple majority, but it means that only changes with broad consensus are likely to pass. It also means that the results of a vote will be less contentious, as there need to be at least twice as many votes in favour than against for it to pass. Finally, this change would mean there would be no interpretation issues as to what constitutes a language change, as all changes must meet the same bar. To those who say this might impede progress, I would like to point out that every single RFC accepted for PHP 5.6 so far was accepted by more than a 2/3 majority, and so would not have been stopped by this hurdle. Also, I’m not sure it is fair if ‘progress’ happens when there is not broad consensus on an issue. There is not yet an RFC for this, as I want to discuss the concept first. I’d also rather not talk about other aspects of voting reform in this thread if possible, such as waiting periods or what karma is needed to vote, so I would ask that you please make a separate thread for that. Thanks! [0] irc://irc.efnet.org/#php.pecl [1] https://wiki.php.net/rfc/voting -- Andrea Faulds http://ajf.me/