Reference of discussion in RFCs

php.internals

Nick

1 year ago
Hey there! When I try to look into the discussions of older RFCs to find out why they ended up the way they did, it’s not easy. You hardly can find them. This is because they are often not referenced in the RFC itself. Going forward, would it make sense to make it mandatory to reference '[Discussion]' and '[Vote]' in the RFC text itself? Cheers Nick

AllenJB

1 year ago
On 01/09/2025 11:28, Nick wrote:
> Hey there! > > When I try to look into the discussions of older RFCs to find out why > they ended up the way they did, it’s not easy. You hardly can find > them. This is because they are often not referenced in the RFC itself. > > Going forward, would it make sense to make it mandatory to reference > '[Discussion]' and '[Vote]' in the RFC text itself? > > *Cheers* > Nick
FYI I can usually find most RFC discussions by searching on https://externals.io for the RFC title To be clear, I would also still encourage RFC authors to add discussion and vote thread links to RFCs. I think it helps people who are not familiar with the RFC process when RFCs are linked outside of the list, such as on Reddit or social media. I'll often add a comment to RFC posts on r/php to link the discussion threads so people can follow the list discussion. Also, some discussions are harder to find when there's many other list discussions that mention the same keywords as the RFC title. Thought: This could potentially be automated with a script that looks for list emails with a RFC link in the body. If the email body contains a RFC link, the subject contains the RFC title and either [Discussion] or [Vote], then add a reference to the linked RFC wiki page.

Tim Düsterhus

1 year ago
Hi Am 2025-09-01 12:28, schrieb Nick:
> When I try to look into the discussions of older RFCs to find out why > they ended up the way they did, it’s not easy. You hardly can find > them. This is because they are often not referenced in the RFC itself. > > Going forward, would it make sense to make it mandatory to reference > '[Discussion]' and '[Vote]' in the RFC text itself?
I was having troubles finding the corresponding discussion thread for some RFCs myself before (and regretfully did not always add the links to the list archives myself to my own RFCs). I think this makes sense and I'm happy to include this requirement as part of my current “Clarify discussion and voting period rules” RFC. Would you mind sending another email to the discussion thread of that one to have it all in a single location: https://news-web.php.net/php.internals/128594? Best regards Tim Düsterhus

Christoph Becker

1 year ago
On 01.09.2025 at 12:28, Nick wrote:
> When I try to look into the discussions of older RFCs to find out why they ended up the way they did, it’s not easy. You hardly can find them. This is because they are often not referenced in the RFC itself. > > Going forward, would it make sense to make it mandatory to reference '[Discussion]' and '[Vote]' in the RFC text itself?
Well, the RFC template has a "Reference" section which says: | Links to external references, discussions, or RFCs. In my opinion, that is a perfect place to add these links. Of course, someone needs to actually add this information. Christoph