Re: w3process-ISSUE-126 (autoWDpublish): Automatic WD publishing tool may change the W3C center of gravity around WGs [Process Document]

On Sep 12, 2014, at 2:51 , Stephen Zilles <szilles@adobe.com> wrote:

> Note that feel strongly that there is a responsibility that an Editor takes on, and as a spec goes to Last Call and beyond the consensus from the group should be stronger and stronger; but roadblocks we put in the way of improving the timeliness of /TR/ are not helpful.

>> [SZ] This was exactly the point some of the CSS Editors were making. There was a concern, however, that this means that it is difficult for a reader of TRs to tell whether a given version of the TR is an updated Editor’s Draft or an approved WG Draft. One suggestion, which may require a Process Change, was to have two levels of TR: WDs which would be approved by the WG as they are now and (for lack of a better name) Provisional WDs which would be more frequently updated by the Editor without requiring a formal WG action. (It was noted that we should be able to expect that Editors would be responsible and only make updates that would be unlikely to upset the WG without prior WG action.) It was suggested that these two kinds of TR would have different styling and status information, that Changes since last document would only apply to WDs, and that there would be two last version pointers in the header, one to the last Provisional WD and one to the last WD. This approach should work for both the audience (e.g. implementers) that needs up-to-date information and the audience that only want to review significant changes. The former uses both WDs and  provisional WDs and the latter would just use WDs. This seems to be an approach that satisfies both the concerns of Editors and the concern that Danial Glazman raised.
>> 


I think we only need two classes of document here:  editor’s drafts (which represent the editors’ best efforts) and WG working drafts (which represent the WG’s consensus on where they are).

If a WG wants to do a cursory periodic look and approve pushes to WD, or even at certain (e.g. early) stages in the process allow an editor to push unsupervised, that’s up to them.


David Singer
Manager, Software Standards, Apple Inc.

Received on Friday, 12 September 2014 14:49:31 UTC