EIP Improvement Process #124

Summary

EIPIP #124 agreed to add a new associate-editor tier, reaffirmed that most proposals should default to Final with Living reserved for editor-authored governance documents, and tackled the flood of ETHbot GitHub mentions that ping every editor on every PR. Editors decided to stop @-mentioning all editors from the bot (replacing it with a non-pinging note), agreed AI agents may assist with low-hanging reviews and labeling but not close or merge PRs, and heard an EIP Insight demo of a new process-type PR board and contributor-analysis pages.

Decisions

• •Add a new associate-EIP-editor tier; the associate-editors call for input is closing in favor.
• •Informational and upgrade-nomenclature EIPs default to Final; Living status is reserved for internal governance documents authored by editors (EIP-1, the handbook).
• •ETHbot will stop @-mentioning all editors on every PR and instead post a non-pinging note directing authors to the right editors.
• •AI agents may assist editors with low-hanging reviews and labeling under limited permissions, but closing or merging PRs remains a human decision.
• •The test-case and reference-implementation documentation format will be added to contributing.md.

Highlights

• •Associate EIP editors: the call is closing in favor, adding a new tier of editors.
• •Informational and upgrade-nomenclature EIPs default to Final; Living status is reserved for internal governance documents authored by editors (EIP-1, the handbook).
• •ETHbot @-mentions every editor on every PR, which is overwhelming and causes editors to miss mentions elsewhere; the fix is to remove the @-mentions and instead post a non-pinging note telling authors which editors to contact.
• •A bot architecture bug means asset-only or unattributed PRs cannot be matched to an EIP, so the bot pings all editors and fails to ping the author.
• •AI agents may help editors with low-hanging reviews and labeling under limited permissions, but closing or merging a PR must stay a human decision.
• •EIP Insight demo (Dhanush): a new PR board that filters open editor-review PRs by process type (typo, new EIP, status change, website, tooling, EIP-1, content edit) plus age/priority, and new contributor-analysis pages with rankings and timelines.
• •Pooja asked whether EIP Insight can identify proposal authors who are not on client dev teams, to measure how well the upgrade process is understood outside core teams.

Action Items

• •Sam - Close the associate-editors call in favor and handle low-hanging typo PRs (close/merge)
• •Editors - Review and comment on the open calls for input (Unicode links, citation status tag, informational status, removing the online serial)
• •Sam / bot maintainers - Fix ETHbot: remove editor @-mentions (use a non-pinging note) and fix the bug where it cannot identify the EIP and fails to ping the author
• •Pooja - Add a test-case and reference-implementation section to contributing.md
• •Dhanush / EIP Insight - Promote the new EIP Insight board as the main board and look into identifying non-client-team authors whose proposals enter upgrades