Re: QA Sprint, what to do with deprecated specs

It seems to me that there are several useful and functional views on the
vast array of web specs, in their various states:

1. what is current de-facto standard and practice

2. what is the forward-looking and experimental landscape

3. what is our history

and for the wizards on the core team and other geniuses:

4. what is the whole picture

I imagine everything from using color to timelapse animation to show how
this living thing keeps evolving and changing to meet our needs and exploit
our understanding and our technology. I assume that our core challenge is
to first correctly define and tag content, and then provide useful views
and navigation.

On top of that, once we have something reasonably current and complete, we
want routine flows for new stuff to come in, existing stuff to mature and
evolve, and older stuff to move off the screen (except for the historical
and whole-picture views).

Sorry if this is only restating the obvious and preaching to the choir.

DougM


On Sat, Jul 5, 2014 at 10:13 AM, Amelia Bellamy-Royds <
amelia.bellamy.royds@gmail.com> wrote:

> As I understand it, a "Working Group Note" is essentially an abandonned
> "Working Draft" which will not be pursued further.
>
> For marking the standardization status in the reference pages, we could
> either
>
> (a) update the list of options for the W3C status [1] to include a
> "Working Group Note" option, and update the templates and style sheet to
> apply an appropriate icon (probably the same as is used for deprecated);
> or,
>
> (b) just use the "deprecated" label.  The current definition on the
> property page [1] is wide enough to include abandonned proposals, but it
> might cause confusion because it isn't what people think of as a deprecated
> spec.  (On the other hand, those not familiar with W3 processes might not
> realize that "Working Group Note" is only used for abandonned proposals, so
> deprecated might be more clear.)
>
> However,* this brings up a larger issue to be added to the list of TODOs*
> (content issues where a decision needs to be made about the desired course
> of action) [2]:
>
> What is the WebPlatform Docs policy regarding deprecated or obsolete
> features?  Do we still want to maintain those reference pages for
> completeness sake?
>
> Some reviewers have been marking for deletion all pages on
> deprecated/obsolete properties.  However, that seems to me to be contrary
> to the idea of building up a lasting, comprehensive reference guide to both
> established and experimental web technologies.  The nature of experimental
> technologies is that some will be abandoned or deprecated.  A good
> reference page should clearly indicate that something is deprecated, but
> shouldn't erase the past.
>
> However, not deleting deprecated pages, especially for things that were
> never widely implemented, could create problems by cluttering up automatic
> listings pages with irrelevant pages if additional checks aren't added to
> screen them out.
>
> The closest policy statement I could find is from the "Pillars" page [3],
> which says:
>
>    - The stability and implementation status of features will be clearly
>    marked; however, there is no requirement that features be stable or widely
>    deployed to be included.
>
> What do people think?  What should be the approach to deprecated features
> or abandonned drafts (i.e. Working Group Notes)?  How should we indicate
> this policy to contributors?  Does anything need to be changed about the
> way deprecated features are identified in the documentation?
>
> On the readiness marker issue, my perspective is that article readiness is
> separate from the feature status. Once the reference page has been updated
> to clearly identify the deprecated/obsolete status of the feature, the
> article itself can be marked "ready to use".  Does anyone have any concerns
> about that?
>
> Amelia
>
> [1]: http://docs.webplatform.org/wiki/Property:Standardization_Status
> [2]: (email from me to the list, July 4, titled "List of TODOs discovered
> during the QA Review"  -- couldn't find the archive link, since w3.org
> websites are down!)
> [3]: http://docs.webplatform.org/wiki/WPD:Policy/Pillars
>
>
> On 5 July 2014 09:43, Renoir Boulanger <renoir@w3.org> wrote:
>
>> Hi all,
>>
>> I stumbled on an interesting case; An section which is now a Group note
>> and a related new working draft that is completely different.
>>
>> If you look at filesystem API [0] page, it links to a, now group note
>> [1]. But I found a related spec [2], but i don’t find the matching
>> section.
>>
>> What do we do in this case?
>>
>> - Keep reference to group note
>> - Update docs status to group note ***
>> - Set readiness as: Out of date
>>
>> *** The document [1] says its a Group Note, but we do not have this
>> choice, is it deprecated?
>>
>> Opinion?
>>
>>   [0]: http://docs.webplatform.org/wiki/apis/filesystem/Entry/isDirectory
>>   [1]: http://www.w3.org/TR/file-system-api/
>>   [2]: http://www.w3.org/TR/FileAPI/#dfn-file
>>
>> --
>> Regards,
>>
>> Renoir Boulanger  |  Developer operations engineer
>> W3C  |  Web Platform Project
>>
>> http://w3.org/people/#renoirb  ✪  https://renoirboulanger.com/  ✪
>>  @renoirb
>> ~
>>
>>
>>
>