On Wed, 2 May 2018 at 8:28 PM, Simon Peyton Jones wrote:

| > Sometimes, a language extension idea could benefit from | some community discussion before it's ready for a formal proposal. | | Can I point out it's not only ghc developers who make proposals.

| I'd rather you post this idea more widely.

(I meant for David to post more widely the idea of using Github issues tracker. Because I suspect the people who would most benefit from the 'community discussion' are not participants on ghc-devs.)

The Right Thing is surely for the main GHC proposals pav[g]e https://github.com/ghc-proposals/ghc-proposals to describe how you can up a "pre-proposal". That is, document the entire process in one, easy to find, place.

Mind you, I'm unclear about the distinction between a pre-proposal and a proposal. ...

Thanks Simon, Speaking as a non-developer of ghc, often there's a bright idea with no very clear notion how best it fits into Haskell, or could be implemented effectively/efficiently: * maybe it's something seen in another language; * maybe the proposer finds themself writing the same boilerplate repeatedly, and wonders if that's a common idiom the language could capture; * sometimes it starts as more of a 'how do I do this?' question; then you get told you can't; then other people chip in with 'yes I'd like to do that too'. * sometimes it's more of a niggle: this really annoys me/is awkward/is confusing every time I bump into it/even though I can work round it. Both are drafts that invite community discussion,

prior to submitting to the committee for decision.

I'm guessing as to why David raised the question. I've noticed (a minority of) proposals generate a huge amount of discussion, a lot of which is: you can already do that, or nearly all of that, or there's good reasons why ghc/Haskell shouldn't do that. Then maybe the difficulty that needs tackling is that the submitter isn't really following the process/perhaps the process document should be clearer about what threshold of readiness the ideas should be in before formalising(?) I'll try to avoid specifics here, but two proposals I can think of essentially amounted to: Language XXX has YYY; language XXX is similar to Haskell; I think YYY is great; please put YYY in Haskell; P.S. I don't really understand ghc and all the extensions it now offers. As you've remarked yourself, sometimes the 'community discussion' gets so convoluted and sidetracked it's impossible to make out where the proposal is at, and whether all objections have been addressed. That's the point at which IMO the proposal should be withdrawn and resubmitted as a 'fresh start'. OTOH, as I said, there's plenty of other forums those less formal/pre-proposal discussions could happen. Some used to happen on Trac/started life as bug reports -- which is rightfully discouraged. _Could_ happen but often doesn't raise a response. What if Github issues tracker just becomes another backwater where ideas go to get ignored? AntC

| -----Original Message----- | From: Glasgow-haskell-users On Behalf Of Anthony Clayden | Sent: 02 May 2018 02:34 | To: glasgow-haskell-users@haskell.org; ghc-devs@haskell.org | Subject: Re: Open up the issues tracker on ghc-proposals | | > On May 1, 2018, at 2:24 PM, David Feuer wrote: | > | > Sometimes, a language extension idea could benefit from | some community discussion before it's ready for a formal proposal. | | Can I point out it's not only ghc developers who make proposals. I'd | rather you post this idea more widely. | | As a datapoint, I found ghc-users and the café just fine for those | discussions. | Ghc-users seems to have very low traffic/is rather wasted currently. | And I believe a lot of people pre-discuss on reddit. | For ideas that have been on the back burner for a long time, there's | often wiki pages. (For example re Quantified | Constraints.) | | > I'd like to propose that we open up the GitHub issues | tracker for ghc-proposals to serve as a place to discuss pre-proposal | ideas. Once those discussions converge on one or a few specific plans, | someone can write a proper proposal. | | I'm not against that. There gets to be a lot of cruft on some | discussions about proposals, so I'd expect we could archive it all | once a proposal is more formalised. |

On Th, 3 May 2018 at 13:53 UTC, Joachim Breitner wrote:

I am worried about the signal-to-noise ratio for those poor committee members ...

Thanks Joachim, Yes that's exactly the worry. So please tell the rest of us how to best use your collective time. First help yourselves/get your own shit together: there's now a long discussion on the committee mailing list about the specifics of #99. There are good questions, good answers, good ideas. None of the rest of use can contribute to that. The committee list is supposed to be low volume/decision making only. WTF? (That seems to be triggered by one particular committee member who seldom/never looks at github, and prefers email discussion. Yous others could perhaps coach him?)

hmm, some of that sounds like it would be better suited for haskell-cafe, StackOverflow, ...

My point about "sometimes it's more of a niggle" was aimed at exactly your (Joachim's) series of proposals 'Resurrect Pattern Signatures'. The motivation is it helps "confused beginners". But those beginners won't be providing feedback on github. Instead you've got feedback from experienced users who've all said they see no point in the proposal. So the discussion has gone round and round and spun off other proposals. That whole series of discussions would be better happening somewhere else: where? David's quite correct

...

Haskell-cafe might work, but it's a bit tricky to pull up all the language extension ideas discussed there.

...

My limited experience with glasgow-haskell-users is that it's where

My impression is not many people who could help refine a pre-proposal ever take part in the cafe. Stackoverflow likewise. (I did raise a 'how do I do this?' type question there. It was David who responded, thank you. But I ended up answering it myself; and it turned out there was already a proposal on the slate.) threads go to die. (I did try to continue one of David's threads there a few months ago.) But yes, my experience too. And that's sad because it's a wasted resource. I'm grateful to Simon for noticing this thread; but most topics I've raised on ghc-users have gone nowhere. So then I've tried pursuing them by poaching on Trac or github -- which is an abuse, I know.

Most vague ideas get better when the proposer is nudged to sit down and write it up properly! (And some get dropped in the process, which is also good :-)).

Yes exactly what I'm trying to get to happen. How/where? Here's a specific example: there's talk of baking ScopedTypeVariables into the H2020 standard. There's also people unhappy with ScopedTypeVariables as currently (I'm one, but I don't know if my reservations are the same as others'). If we don't have an alternative proposal (and preferably an experimental extension) by 2020, the committee can only go with the as currently fait accompli or continue the H2010 status quo. I can volunteer to at least scrape together all the objections to ScopedTypeVariables as currently. It's not yet a proposal, so not on github. Start a wiki page? A cafe thread? (It'll get lost.) A ghc-users thread? (It'll get ignored.) AntC

Please do this! I don’t care what forums or list or whatever. As long as it’s collated and such It could even be on the prime issue tracker for prime proposals. Just that it’s written down :) On Wed, May 2, 2018 at 7:17 PM Anthony Clayden wrote:

On Th, 3 May 2018 at 13:53 UTC, Joachim Breitner wrote:

...

I am worried about the signal-to-noise ratio for those poor committee members ...

Thanks Joachim, Yes that's exactly the worry. So please tell the rest of us how to best use your collective time.

First help yourselves/get your own shit together: there's now a long discussion on the committee mailing list about the specifics of #99. There are good questions, good answers, good ideas. None of the rest of use can contribute to that. The committee list is supposed to be low volume/decision making only. WTF?

(That seems to be triggered by one particular committee member who seldom/never looks at github, and prefers email discussion. Yous others could perhaps coach him?)

...

hmm, some of that sounds like it would be better suited for haskell-cafe, StackOverflow, ...

My point about "sometimes it's more of a niggle" was aimed at exactly your (Joachim's) series of proposals 'Resurrect Pattern Signatures'. The motivation is it helps "confused beginners". But those beginners won't be providing feedback on github. Instead you've got feedback from experienced users who've all said they see no point in the proposal. So the discussion has gone round and round and spun off other proposals. That whole series of discussions would be better happening somewhere else: where?

David's quite correct

...

...

Haskell-cafe might work, but it's a bit tricky to pull up all the language extension ideas discussed there.

My impression is not many people who could help refine a pre-proposal ever take part in the cafe.

Stackoverflow likewise. (I did raise a 'how do I do this?' type question there. It was David who responded, thank you. But I ended up answering it myself; and it turned out there was already a proposal on the slate.)

...

...

My limited experience with glasgow-haskell-users is that it's where threads go to die.

(I did try to continue one of David's threads there a few months ago.) But yes, my experience too. And that's sad because it's a wasted resource. I'm grateful to Simon for noticing this thread; but most topics I've raised on ghc-users have gone nowhere. So then I've tried pursuing them by poaching on Trac or github -- which is an abuse, I know.

...

Most vague ideas get better when the proposer is nudged to sit down and write it up properly! (And some get dropped in the process, which is also good :-)).

Yes exactly what I'm trying to get to happen. How/where?

Here's a specific example: there's talk of baking ScopedTypeVariables into the H2020 standard. There's also people unhappy with ScopedTypeVariables as currently (I'm one, but I don't know if my reservations are the same as others'). If we don't have an alternative proposal (and preferably an experimental extension) by 2020, the committee can only go with the as currently fait accompli or continue the H2010 status quo.

I can volunteer to at least scrape together all the objections to ScopedTypeVariables as currently. It's not yet a proposal, so not on github. Start a wiki page? A cafe thread? (It'll get lost.) A ghc-users thread? (It'll get ignored.)

AntC

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Hi, Am Mittwoch, den 02.05.2018, 09:53 +0000 schrieb Anthony Clayden:

Speaking as a non-developer of ghc, often there's a bright idea with no very clear notion how best it fits into Haskell, or could be implemented effectively/efficiently:

* maybe it's something seen in another language; * maybe the proposer finds themself writing the same boilerplate repeatedly, and wonders if that's a common idiom the language could capture; * sometimes it starts as more of a 'how do I do this?' question; then you get told you can't; then other people chip in with 'yes I'd like to do that too'. * sometimes it's more of a niggle: this really annoys me/is awkward/is confusing every time I bump into it/even though I can work round it.

hmm, some of that sounds like it would be better suited for haskell- cafe, StackOverflow, Reddit or your personal twitter feed, at least until the idea has matured a little bit more. I am worried about the signal-to-noise ratio for those poor committee members who have not given up on following the GitHub notifications for the ghc-proposals repository. We can try, but I reserve the right to abondon the experiment if we end up with a few unproductive long discussions around some obviously whacky idea, and a larger number of vague abandoned “wouldn’t it be nice” issues. Most vague ideas get better when the proposer is nudged to sit down and write it up properly! (And some get dropped in the process, which is also good :-)). Cheers, Joachim -- Joachim Breitner mail@joachim-breitner.de http://www.joachim-breitner.de/