[Zope3-dev] Development methodology (Re: [Zope-CMF] Future CMF) (rant)

[Chris Withers]

Guido van Rossum wrote:
> 
> Maybe this is a key observation: that the PEP process works better
> than the Fishbowl process because it is a little more formal.  A PEP
> requires you to keep everything in one place and spend some time
> editing it so that it's understandable for outsiders.  The PEP editor
> enforces form standards, and keeps a centralized index, so you can
> always find all PEPs.  PEPs also have categories, like proposal,
> draft, standard, final, rejected, etc., which help.  Finally, PEPs
> have a short name (the 1-4 digit PEP number) which makes references
> easier and seems to be easier to remember than the typical Wiki name.

These are all really good points...

> Wikis often wither on the vine: we recently had a semi-disaster in the
> Python community with Wikis, where a Wiki was proposed and created for
> communications regarding backporting of fixes to Python 2.2.2, and
> then left mostly unused.  The few people who did use the Wiki found
> their bugs being ignored; most people who backported bugs didn't
> bother updating the Wiki.

I've long had the feeling that Wiki's appear to bve a very nice solution to this 
class of problems but just don't work in practice :-(

How do other people feel about this?

cheers,

Chris