> On 30. Aug 2025, at 03:21, Tim Düsterhus <t...@bastelstu.be> 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
Hey Tim, As requested in the other thread, I am reposting it here. I’d appreciate if you could add it to your RFC! And while I we are on it, I will add another point because your RFC touches this anyway. 1) Reference of discussion in RFCs When I try to look into the discussions of older RFCs to find out why they ended up the way they did, it’s not easy. You hardly can find them. This is because they are often not referenced in the RFC itself. Going forward, would it make sense to make it mandatory to reference '[Discussion]' and '[Vote]' in the RFC text itself? 2) Make revisions public I don’t quite understand why RFC revisions are not public. I believe it would be very helpful to see the diffs of the RFCs. Because then everyone can see how and why a RFC evolved. Revisions could be listed at the bottom; on click you see the diff. Perhaps it makes sense to only apply this change to RFCs that would be proposed after this change potentially will be accepted. — For completeness, I copied the two answers from the other thread below and CC Allen: > On 1. Sep 2025, at 18:09, AllenJB <php.li...@allenjb.me.uk> wrote: > > On 01/09/2025 11:28, Nick wrote: >> Hey there! >> >> When I try to look into the discussions of older RFCs to find out why they >> ended up the way they did, it’s not easy. You hardly can find them. This is >> because they are often not referenced in the RFC itself. >> >> Going forward, would it make sense to make it mandatory to reference >> '[Discussion]' and '[Vote]' in the RFC text itself? >> >> Cheers >> Nick > FYI I can usually find most RFC discussions by searching on > https://externals.io <https://externals.io/> for the RFC title > > To be clear, I would also still encourage RFC authors to add discussion and > vote thread links to RFCs. I think it helps people who are not familiar with > the RFC process when RFCs are linked outside of the list, such as on Reddit > or social media. I'll often add a comment to RFC posts on r/php to link the > discussion threads so people can follow the list discussion. > > Also, some discussions are harder to find when there's many other list > discussions that mention the same keywords as the RFC title. > > Thought: This could potentially be automated with a script that looks for > list emails with a RFC link in the body. If the email body contains a RFC > link, the subject contains the RFC title and either [Discussion] or [Vote], > then add a reference to the linked RFC wiki page. > Thanks, I knew of externals. It can be helpful sometimes but not always. The search is quite limited, as you also noted. I think we agree that it cannot be wrong to have it in the RFC. > On 1. Sep 2025, at 18:16, Tim Düsterhus <t...@bastelstu.be> wrote: > > Hi > > Am 2025-09-01 12:28, schrieb Nick: >> When I try to look into the discussions of older RFCs to find out why they >> ended up the way they did, it’s not easy. You hardly can find them. This is >> because they are often not referenced in the RFC itself. >> Going forward, would it make sense to make it mandatory to reference >> '[Discussion]' and '[Vote]' in the RFC text itself? > > I was having troubles finding the corresponding discussion thread for some > RFCs myself before (and regretfully did not always add the links to the list > archives myself to my own RFCs). I think this makes sense and I'm happy to > include this requirement as part of my current “Clarify discussion and voting > period rules” RFC. Would you mind sending another email to the discussion > thread of that one to have it all in a single location: > https://news-web.php.net/php.internals/128594? > > Best regards > Tim Düsterhus Done. :) — Cheers, Nick
