Re: Discuss new features/enhancements or large changes for users in emacs-devel

[Eli Zaretskii <eliz@gnu.org>]

> From: Richard Stallman <rms@gnu.org>
> Cc: adam@alphapapa.net, emacs-devel@gnu.org
> Date: Sun, 01 Dec 2024 23:09:19 -0500
> 
>   > It doesn't _really_ matter (IMHO) who's
>   > doing it - even if a discusser is a decider
>   > (maintainer).  What matters is to get the
>   > discussion viewed (and maybe participated
>   > in) by a _wider audience_.
> 
> I agree completely.
> 
> When the topic of a thread wanders from A to B, there's no reason to
> blame anyone.  It is natural that sometimes discussions wander, and
> sometimes this wandering can convert a discussion of fixing a bug into
> a decision about features.
> 
> When that happens, we should recognize that the topic has changed,
> and handle the new topic in the way that it calls for.

I don't think anyone will disagree, at least not in general.

That said, I would like to point out a few aspects that AFAIU are at
the real core of the issues which prompted this:

  . a discussion could wander into a tangent, in which case TRT is to
    ask people to make the tangent a separate discussion, instead of
    moving it to emacs-devel
  . we encourage people to submit "feature-request" bug reports (and
    Emacs recently acquired the "M-x submit-emacs-patch" command for
    that reason), in which case the bug list _is_ the proper place to
    discuss that.  When the feature is significant and/or affects
    Emacs or our users in prominent ways, prudence would mandate that
    we move such general discussions to emacs-devel, but that's a
    judgment call, not an automatic knee-jerk reaction