Abstract
This PEP outlines the python-dev voting guidelines. These
guidelines serve to provide feedback or gauge the "wind direction"
on a particular proposal, idea, or feature. They don't have a
binding force.
Rationale
When a new idea, feature, patch, etc. is floated in the Python
community, either through a PEP or on the mailing lists (most
likely on python-dev [1]), it is sometimes helpful to gauge the
community's general sentiment. Sometimes people just want to
register their opinion of an idea. Sometimes the BDFL wants to
take a straw poll. Whatever the reason, these guidelines have
been adopted so as to provide a common language for developers.
While opinions are (sometimes) useful, but they are never binding.
Opinions that are accompanied by rationales are always valued
higher than bare scores (this is especially true with -1 votes).
Voting Scores
The scoring guidelines are loosely derived from the Apache voting
procedure [2], with of course our own spin on things. There are 4
possible vote scores:
+1 I like it
+0 I don't care, but go ahead
-0 I don't care, so why bother?
-1 I hate it
You may occasionally see wild flashes of enthusiasm (either for or
against) with vote scores like +2, +1000, or -1000. These aren't
really valued much beyond the above scores, but it's nice to see
people get excited about such geeky stuff.
References
[1] Python Developer's Guide,
http://www.python.org/dev/
[2] Apache Project Guidelines and Voting Rules
http://httpd.apache.org/dev/guidelines.html
Copyright
This document has been placed in the public domain.