Hello, On 2015-10-21 at 02:39:57 +0200, Geoffrey Mainland wrote: [...]
In effect, only those who actively follow the libraries list have had a voice in these decisions. Maybe that is what the community wants. I hope not. How then can people like me (and Henrik and Graham) have a say without committing to actively following the libraries list?
We have a method to solve this: elected representatives. Right now the Core Libraries Committee elects its own members; perhaps it is time for that to change.
[...]
Proposal 1: Move to community election of the members of the Core Libraries Committee. Yes, I know this would have its own issues.
How exactly do public elections of representatives address the problem that some people feel left out? Have you considered nominating yourself or somebody else you have confidence in for the core libraries committee? You'd still have to find somebody to represent your interests, regardless of whether the committee is self-elected or direct-elected. Here's some food for thought regarding language design by voting or its indirect form via a directly elected language committee: Back in February there was a large-scale survey which resulted (see [2] for more details) in a rather unequivocal 4:1 majority *for* going through with the otherwise controversial FTP implementation. If the community elections would result in a similar spirit, you'd could easily end up with a similarly 4:1 pro-change biased committee. Would you consider that a well balanced committee formation?
Proposal 2: After a suitable period of discussion on the libraries list, the Core Libraries Committee will summarize the arguments for and against a proposal and post it, along with a (justified) preliminary decision, to a low-traffic, announce-only email list. After another suitable period of discussion, they will issue a final decision. What is a suitable period of time? Perhaps that depends on the properties of the proposal, such as whether it breaks backwards compatibility.
That generally sounds like a good compromise, if this actually helps reaching the otherwise unreachable parts of the community and have their voices heard.
Proposal 3: A decision regarding any proposal that significantly affects backwards compatibility is within the purview of the Haskell Prime Committee, not the Core Libraries Committee.
I don't see how that would change much. The prior Haskell Prime Committee has been traditionally self-elected as well. So it's just the label of the committee you'd swap out. In the recent call of nominations[1] for Haskell Prime, the stated area of work for the new nominations was to take care of the *language* part, because that's what we are lacking the workforce for. Since its creation for the very purpose of watching over the core libraries, the core-libraries-committee has been almost exclusively busy with evaluating and deciding about changes to the `base` library and overseeing their implementation. Transferring this huge workload to the new Haskell Prime committee members who have already their hands full with revising the language part would IMO just achieve to reduce the effectiveness of the upcoming Haskell Prime committee, and therefore increase the risk of failure in producing an adequate new Haskell Report revision. Regards, H.V.Riedel [1]: https://mail.haskell.org/pipermail/haskell-prime/2015-September/003936.html [2]: https://mail.haskell.org/pipermail/haskell-cafe/2015-February/118336.html