The RFC Vote project
I've been head over heels into programming the past two weeks. I started a new open source project, and it's been going great! Today, I want to share a bit of what's going on, and hope to peak your interest as well.
Two weeks ago, I had a chat with my colleague Roman about how PHP is evolving: we both want to get a better understanding of how the community feels about RFCs. While technically, the internals mailing list is open to everyone, I know only a very small group of PHP developers who actually participate. So we decided to build a small app that could help us and the community to lower the bar for participation.
Its temporary name is "RFC Vote" — but please share your ideas if you have better names! It's a small project that allows everyone to vote for RFCs. The most interesting part though is how you vote: if you vote directly, you must give argumentation to explain why you voted yes or no. On top of that: everyone can vote for existing arguments individually. Say someone already shared the same reasons as you for voting yes or no, then you can simply vote for that argument, instead of writing something on your own — argument votes are added to the total result as well.
We hope that by using this vote mechanic, we'll get better insights into why people vote the way they do, and not just if people would like a feature or not. And, maybe — we can even inspire internal developers to take a look at the community results, before casting their own vote for upcoming RFCs.
Here's an except from our about page:
This project is dedicated to providing a platform for the PHP community to express their thoughts and feelings about the proposals for the PHP language in an easier way.
Our main goal is to visualize the diverse opinions and arguments surrounding PHP's proposed features, making it easier to understand the benefits and downsides of each proposal. By doing so, we hope to foster a greater understanding of how PHP developers feel about these changes.
While official voting on RFCs is limited to internal qualified developers and a specific group of contributors, RFC Vote offers a space for everyone in the PHP community to share their voice. Your votes and comments won't directly influence the official PHP RFC outcomes, but they can serve as valuable insights for those involved in the decision-making process.
In addition to casting a vote, you are encouraged to share your reasoning behind your choices on each RFC. By explaining why you voted yes or no, we can collectively gain better insights into the popularity or concerns associated with an RFC. This collaborative approach allows us to learn from one another and contributes to a more informed and connected PHP community.
So, next thing I knew, I was programming like a madman, did some livestreams to show off the progress, and got help from 9 other developers.
After two weeks, we're nearing a "version 1", and so I wanted to share it with you as well. Maybe you have some ideas, questions, or just want to take a look? Well, the site is already live here: https://rfc.stitcher.io/, and you can check out the code on GitHub.
Oh, by the way, I'll be doing another live stream at 11 CEST today (less than 2 hours from when this post was published), so you might want to tune in? I'll see you there!