ACP template should better reflect actual feedback latency

[scottmcm]

The ACP template currently says

libs-team/.github/ISSUE_TEMPLATE/api-change-proposal.md

Line 29 in 397fd6a

This issue is part of the libs-api team [API change proposal process]. Once this issue is filed the libs-api team will review open proposals in its weekly meeting. You should receive feedback within a week or two.

However, near as I can tell, ACPs are not reviewed in the weekly meetings -- at least there's no notes about them in minutes like https://hackmd.io/l8zlGD8cQqeYSfHKG3O33A.

And thus it seems like setting the expectation of "a week or two" for feedback is misleading. It's easy to find examples without feedback for months (#115 #67 #63).

[pitaj]

I realize the team is busy and stretched thin, but the stats do not look good. ACPs are sitting without activity for many months, even after they enter Initial Comment Period.

[eholk]

Adding a note about what to do if it's taking longer than expected, like who to ping or a Zulip channel to open a thread on, would help a lot too.

I opened #90 back in August and the only comments I've heard have been from other people who would be interested in a similar feature. It's left me wondering whether I missed a step in the process beyond posting the issue. (And probably I should have followed up before 9 months later...)

[thomcc]

I wonder if given the situation it's worth re-evaluating the ACP process, and adjusting or removing it. I feel like the status quo might be worse than what we had before...

[pitaj]

Yeah I can personally say it's very disheartening to create an ACP and get zero feedback, even after many months 😞

[BurntSushi]

Okay, I merged #219 to at least update the text to give a more accurate expectation.

I do somewhat feel like promising a two week response time is a bit of a high bar to meet.

Another thing to consider is that we, as a team, are overall pretty conservative with what we let into std. Primarily because its support window is "approximately forever." So we should in general expect this sort of process to go somewhat slowly. Whether that also means we have to also respond to literally every incoming request within a short time window is perhaps a different problem though.

[ChrisDenton]

I think it would be nice for a welcoming committee (not necessarily libs-api themselves) to give a non-official thanks and perhaps suggestions (e.g. if the proposal needs more motivation or its explanation is lacking in some way) within a few weeks if possible? Both to reassure the contributor they've been heard and to reduce the time libs-api ultimately need to spend on ACPs.

Some kind of triage would probably be good here too.

[pitaj]

Can we nominate this for discussion in the next libs-api meeting?

[Amanieu]

We will be having an in-person library team meetup in a week, and this is one of the topics that we will want to spend a significant amount of time on.

[pitaj]

New process is proposed here

rust-lang/std-dev-guide#55