Re: Internals and Newcomers and the Sidelines (WAS: Adopt Code of Conduct)

Hi all, > On Jan 12, 2016, at 17:07, Zeev Suraski <zeev@zend.com> wrote: > > Out of 45 approved RFC, 34 would have cleared a 90% bar, 35 would have cleared an 85% bar, and > 38 would have cleared a 75% bar. > > To the best of my recollection, all of the RFCs that generated major storms fall in the these 7 > RFCs that cleared the 67% mark, but failed the 75% mark. > > Very importantly, out of the RFCs that cleared 85% and 90% - none had more than 5 people > opposing, most had 0, and most of the rest had less than 3. > > It's also worth noting that once you clear the 75% mark, you're very likely to also > clear 85% and 90%. Only 3 RFCs cleared 75% and didn't clear 90%. > > What I'm getting at is this: > > Most passed RFCs are manage to gain something that's very close to consensus, way higher > than 2/3, with barely a handful of people opposing. > > If the vote is close to 2/3 - there are very high chances that the RFC is controversial, that > people who oppose it will be opposing it passionately, and that as civilized as we try to be - bad > vibes are likely to ensue. This is a very interesting analysis, and I find it appealing. An alternative interpretation might be: "As people feel an RFC is near the pass/fail point, they argue it more vociferously." That's more ... dynamic? ... interpretation, in that it doesn't matter where the pass/fail point is (2/3, 3/4, etc); conversational volume increases around that point wherever it is. When the perceived support is much higher, or much lower, than the pass/fail point, the conversational volume decreases. That's an untested hypothesis, of course. If it's true, though, it means that raising the bar to 4/5 means conversational volume will increase only for RFCs that already have very high support, which is probably not the intended consequence of raising the bar. -- Paul M. Jones pmjones88@gmail.com http://paul-m-jones.com Modernizing Legacy Applications in PHP https://leanpub.com/mlaphp Solving the N+1 Problem in PHP https://leanpub.com/sn1php