Revising XIP-0 and encouraging XIP idea discussion

[galligan]

XIP-0 just got a meaningful update with the goal of underscoring the importance of discussion of XIP ideas prior to them heading to the more formal XIP Draft stage, and thus a PR.

Why the change?

First, I'll say that it's exciting to see members of the XMTP come up with improvement proposals and go through the work of developing them into Draft XIPs. XMTP was built around the idea that it wouldn't be operated (or built) by any one party, and the improvement proposal process is one way that anyone can contribute to the project.

One thing that we noticed though was that most improvement proposals were jumping straight to the formal Draft stage, which should generally come after a period of discussion with the broader community. And while it's excellent to see new XIP Drafts being written up, we feel like jumping straight to the pull request misses out on critical feedback steps, where the idea can be vetted and improved.

When looking back at XIP-0, which is the "operating manual" for the XMTP Improvement Proposal process, it was clear that there simply wasn't enough emphasis or explanation on the "idea" stage or how pre-Draft discussions play a role. With increasing interest in XMTP, and in developing improvements for it, this felt like a great area for us to focus on and provide some much-needed clarity and guidance to developers.

What's changed?

One new section called Getting Started which has been strategically placed right near the top of the document, has been added to say the following:

Before advancing your idea through the XIP process into the Draft stage, it’s crucial to gather feedback from the community. This will help you vet your idea and assess its originality, potentially saving you time and effort. Engaging with the XMTP community will also help you gauge overall interest in your idea.

Prototyping your proposal may also help to de-risk it and provide a reference implementation to anchor discussions around.

To get started, you can submit your idea as a new topic in the XIP Ideas category in XMTP's GitHub Discussions.

Shepherding an XIP also got a major update which says:

Parties involved in the process are you, the champion or XIP author, the XMTP community, the XIP editors, and the XMTP Core Developers (currently the XMTP Labs team).

Vetting your idea within a discussion is a critical part of the XIP process. We encourage sharing the discussion with reviewers, interested parties, editors, developers, and the community to gather feedback.

Additional vetting criteria may include reviewing reference implementations or assessing whether the idea is too specific for broad adoption within the XMTP ecosystem. It’s important to gauge whether the interest in your XIP is commensurate with the effort required to implement it and how many parties will need to conform to it. While the volume of interest by way of discussion is not an explicitly disqualifying characteristic, it may play a role in advancing beyond the idea stage.

After vetting the idea as described above, your next responsibility is to present the idea as a formal XIP Draft by opening a Pull Request. Following this step, the XIP Editors will review the Draft and make recommendations on its advancement.

What's next?

We now have a dedicated section in our GitHub Discussions forum called 💡 XIP Ideas, which is where we'll encourage any and all ideas for improvements to XMTP to go. There isn't any specific criteria for what qualifies as an idea, so whether it's just a ✨ spark or well-formed fully featured proposal befitting a 🎤 mic drop, we'd love to see you start up a thread there!

Over the next few weeks we'll also be encouraging developers that have already made proposals, or are in the midst of developing new content types or features for XMTP, to submit them as discussions so that we can dig in as a community.

Overall, we're just thrilled to see so much interest in the community to push XMTP forward and want to make sure that everyone is set up to fully explore and socialize their proposals. We can't wait to see what you propose!