Comments on 23 September Editor's Draft of Chapter 7

Charles,

Today I had the pleasure of reviewing:

  Recommendation Track Process, draft proposal 
  Editors' Draft 23 September 2013
  https://dvcs.w3.org/hg/AB/raw-file/default/tr.html

I have a few comments, divided into non-editorial and editorial.

Looking good,

Ian

==================
Non-Editorial

 * 7.4.1.a and 7.4.1.b: "Publishing the First Public Working Draft
   triggers a patent disclosure request,"

   Please change this to "Publishing the First Public Working Draft
   triggers a Call for Exclusions" and refer to section 4 of the
   policy.

   Here's an example of one:
   http://lists.w3.org/Archives/Public/public-html/2013Sep/0028

 * 7.5: "A document published as a Working Group Note does not imply
   any licensing requirements, unless work is resumed and it is
   subsequently published as a W3C Recommendation. " This comes
   close to sounding like an IPR rule. Please delete.

 * 7.6.1

   a) "An errata page MAY include both proposed and normative
   corrections. The Working Group MUST clearly identify which
   corrections are proposed and which are normative." I think this is
   a bug. The corrections only become normative once included in the
   specification. I suggest deleting the sentences.

   b) Please delete all the text related to "Call for Review of 
   Proposed Corrections." This bit of process has never been used
   and the odds that it will be are very low.


==================
Editorial

 * 7.2.2 Wide review. I think the second paragraph, while useful,
 should live outside the process in a resource called "Considerations
 when evaluating wide review of a Recommendation Track Document" or something
 less pompous. 

 In the first paragraph of that section, the last two sentences have
 some duplication. Here's a proposed merging:

  "Before approving transitions, the Director will consider how well
  the group communicated the review opportunity, who actually reviewed
  the document and provided comments — especially groups
  identified as dependencies in the charter, and how the group
  responded to reviews."

 * 7.2.2. "four weeks, ." weird punctuation.

 * 7.2.3. "Worthy ideas should be recorded even when not incorporated
   into a mature document." Suggest instead:

    "The Working Group SHOULD record substantive proposals even when
    not incorporated into a mature document."

   First idea is to identify the subject. Also, "worthy" sounds a bit
   to judgmental to my ear. But I don't feel too strongly about it.

 * 7.4: "The Director must inform the Advisory Committee and group
   Chairs when a technical report has been refused permission to
   advance in maturity level and returned to a Working Group for
   further work." 

   Elsewhere you refer to WG requests. I would propose that the
   language here say that the Director has declined the request.
   I think that the use of such language would clarify the protocol.
   So here:

   "The Director must inform the Advisory Committee and group Chairs
   when he declines a request to advance in maturity level and
   returns it to a Working Group for further work."

   There are other instances of "permission" in the document. My proposal
   is that the Group issues the request and the Director either approves
   or declines the request.

 * 7.4.1.a: "A working group should publish a Working Draft to the W3C
   Technical Reports page every 6 months, or sooner when there have
   been significant changes to the document that would benefit from
   review from beyond the Working Group."

   I suggest putting that at the beginning of the next section instead,
   which is about revising WDs.

 * 7.4.5: " W3C Recommendation normally retains its status forever."
   However in 7.5 you write: " A technical report may remain a Working
   Group Note indefinitely". I like the use of "indefinitely" and 
   recommend that formulatino in 7.4.5.

 * There is some inconsistent uppercase usage for Director, Working Group,
   Working Draft.


--
Ian Jacobs <ij@w3.org>      http://www.w3.org/People/Jacobs
Tel:                                          +1 718 260 9447

Received on Friday, 27 September 2013 01:11:26 UTC