PEP: 10
Title: Voting Guidelines
Author: Barry Warsaw <barry@python.org>
Status: Active
Type: Process
Content-Type: text/x-rst
Created: 07-Mar-2002
Post-History: 07-Mar-2002



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.
