Re: VC Specifications Directory goes live

On Wed, Mar 22, 2023 at 9:17 AM David Chadwick
<d.w.chadwick@truetrust.co.uk> wrote:
> I have just encountered another issue with the directory entry. What is the semantic of "maintainer"? Is this the maintainer of the directory entry, or the maintainer of the specification that is pointed to by the directory entry? These could be different people as they are clearly different roles. Currently I have assumed it is the maintainer(s) of the directory entry.

Yes, it's supposed to be the maintainer of both, but as you note,
that's not always the case.

The question here, again, is one of simplicity and determinism; we
want a single point of contact.

If a maintainer of a VC specification can't bring themselves to also
add an entry to the VC Specs Dir, then that is an indicator of a
future potential problem. To put it another way, we don't want an
unaffiliated individual adding entries for VC Specifications where
they do not have the right to speak with authority about the
specification and its registration.

It's not that we can't complicate the rules of the VC Specs Directory
to address these cases... it's the cognitive burden we're placing on
the maintainers of the directory when we make the registration
criteria require more thought than necessary.

To go at it from yet another direction: "Do we think that requiring VC
Specification Directory entry authors to also be editors/authors of
the specification they're adding to be an undue burden?" At present,
I'm leaning towards: "No, it's not an undue burden... we want someone
that can speak with authority about the specification being
registered."

> But this raises a larger issue. Where are the definitions of the schema fields to be found? Perhaps they should be added to the Read.me file?

It's currently documented here (see the description fields):

https://github.com/w3c/vc-specs-dir/blob/main/tooling/specification-entry.yml

That said, people are not going to find it easily there, and the
descriptions are not great. Please raise an issue to improve upon the
current state (document these fields in the README.md, the pull
request template, and improve the descriptions in the
specification-entry.yml file.

-- manu

-- 
Manu Sporny - https://www.linkedin.com/in/manusporny/
Founder/CEO - Digital Bazaar, Inc.
News: Digital Bazaar Announces New Case Studies (2021)
https://www.digitalbazaar.com/

Received on Wednesday, 22 March 2023 13:45:43 UTC