Open up the issues tracker on ghc-proposals

[Anthony Clayden]

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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