[ghc-steering-committee] #380 GHC2021: Forth status update / kialo.com

[Joachim Breitner]

Dear Committe,

three weeks in, we have all votes. So now things are looking more concrete.

As always, the table
https://github.com/ghc-proposals/ghc-proposals/blob/ghc2021/proposals/0000-ghc2021.rst#data
has the current data.

Would it be helpful to add columns to that table for each committee
member? So that you can quickly see who voted what?

The following in are safely in (= need more than one vote to change to get out):

BangPatterns, BinaryLiterals, ConstrainedClassMethods, ConstraintKinds,
DeriveDataTypeable, DeriveFoldable, DeriveFunctor, DeriveGeneric,
DeriveLift, DeriveTraversable, EmptyCase, EmptyDataDecls,
EmptyDataDeriving, ExplicitForAll, FlexibleContexts, FlexibleInstances,
GADTSyntax, GeneralisedNewtypeDeriving, HexFloatLiterals,
ImportQualifiedPost, InstanceSigs, KindSignatures,
MultiParamTypeClasses, NamedFieldPuns, NumericUnderscores, PolyKinds,
PostfixOperators, RankNTypes, StandaloneDeriving, StarIsType,
TypeApplications, TypeSynonymInstances

The following are barely in (exactly 8 votes in favor, and 3 against):

ExistentialQuantification, NamedWildCards, StandaloneKindSignatures,
TypeOperators

The following are short one vote (7 in favor, 4 against):

DerivingStrategies, ForeignFunctionInterface, GADTs, MonoLocalBinds,
NegativeLiterals, RecordWildCards, ScopedTypeVariables, TupleSections,
TypeFamilies


I am sure we can have plenty of discussion for each of these. Probably
without end. As Simon says, mailing lists don't scale. So I think we
have two choices:

1. Let the numbers decide, and accept whatever comes out. According to
the process (which we should only follow if we find it helpful) we’d
maybe update our votes, and maybe point out new facets, for one week,
and then just take whatever has 8 votes.

or

2. Explore a more efficient discussion format.

For the latter I mentioned kialo.com before, and maybe it is worth a
try, so I set up a discussion there:
https://www.kialo.com/which-haskell-extensions-should-go-into-ghc2021-43548?path=43548.0

So what do you see there?

There is a discussion tree:

The root is “what goes in GHC2021”

The next layer are all extensions with 7 or 8 votes.
(I assume we should focus on those initially, but feel free to add
more or ask me to.)
For example:  TupleSections

And then each of these has a column where we can collect Pros and cons.
For example:
Pro: Opt-in Syntax
Con: Possible clash with extra-comma syntax extensions.

So you can treat it like a wiki, but with structure to organize the
discussion.

In fact, each pro and con is itself a node where you can add supporting
and disagreeing comments. This means that if you _disagree_ that
TupleSections are actually Opt-in syntax, there is a dedicated place to
raise that point, rather than putting “Not actually opt-in” in the Con 
column of TupleSections…

A good way to navigate the discussion seems to be the radial icon in
the top left; it opens a radial view of the whole discussion, and you
can read arguments by hovering.


The site doesn't offer voting, it is only about structuring the
discussion, and it is designed for much larger and much more
contentious debates (e.g. “Brexit”). So we’ll see how well it works for
us and if it’s helpful.

Cheers,
Joachim


-- 
Joachim Breitner
  mail at joachim-breitner.de
  http://www.joachim-breitner.de/