Note that this sort of defeats the purpose of playground as it's setup now... but we are considering ways to redo it. cc @tdawson

Did you read the original purpose in BZ?
https://bugzilla.redhat.com/show_bug.cgi?id=1746314
Maybe this weakens the concept of the playground, but users who do not agree, find their way to do this anyway. The code change to do that is easy.

I do not have a strong opinion on this. For me, it is just another branch I will build for. But what I do not like too much is the extra commit with "package.cfg" which prevents me to maintain all branches as one code (the same code for all branches). It makes epel8 separate and I would be forced to maintain (new versions, apply patches) it separately.

we are considering ways to redo it.
Maybe I do not understand this statement.

Did you read the original purpose in BZ?
https://bugzilla.redhat.com/show_bug.cgi?id=1746314

Yes.

but this " But, if the package you are maintaining is stable and changes slowly, you do not need it." while true is missing that you may not need it, but everyone who depends on your package being there does depend on it.
If people just randomly don't provide packages there it makes it very hard for others to provide their packages. ;(

Maybe this weakens the concept of the playground, but users who do not agree, find their way to do this anyway. The code change to do that is easy.

Sure.

I do not have a strong opinion on this. For me, it is just another branch I will build for. But what I do not like too much is the extra commit with "package.cfg" which prevents me to maintain all branches as one code (the same code for all branches). It makes epel8 separate and I would be forced to maintain (new versions, apply patches) it separately.

we are considering ways to redo it.
Maybe I do not understand this statement.

I would like to change it so epel8-playground inherits from epel8 in koji. This would allow people who don't care to just not be bothered by it. People who want to opt in could then request that branch seperately. There would be no more package.cfg file in epel8.
I have had no time to work on this however.

This sounds reasonable. Would you, please, put some words into BZ to clarify your stance to the requestor?
Do these plans have any time schedule?

Closing for now - better epel8-playground strategy will be implemented in future.