[Bug 12776] Define process for deciding whether a draft is REC-track or Note-track

http://www.w3.org/Bugs/Public/show_bug.cgi?id=12776

--- Comment #6 from Paul Cotton <Paul.Cotton@microsoft.com> 2011-05-31 19:21:34 UTC ---
(In reply to comment #3)
> Perhaps there should be some clearer guidelines to help editors decide whether
> their work should be Rec or Note?  I'd say any draft which is only meant to
> provide guidance for a select community, such as authors, should be note.  Any
> draft intended to describe an authoring language profile, by reference to the
> normative requirements of another spec, should be note. Any draft that does not
> intend to provide any normative implementation requirements should be note.
> Conversely, any draft that seeks to define normative requirements for features,
> which are not also normatively defined in another spec from this group, should
> be rec.
> Guidelines like these would mean that drafts like the polyglot guidlines, alt
> text guidelines, markup language reference or authoring reference/guides should
> be note.  However, specs like 2D Canvas, Microdata, HTML+RDFa, etc. would be on
> the Rec track.

I do NOT believe the Normativity of a specification is necesarily the test of
whether it should be on the Recommendation track or not.  The real test for me
is if the owning WG plans to maintain the specification or not.

See Section 7.5 "Ending Work on a Technical Report":
http://www.w3.org/2005/10/Process-20051014/process.html#tr-end 

For example the XML Schema Primer is a W3C Recommendation but obviously that
specification does not contain normative text. 

See XML Schema Primer 2nd Edition as proof that the XML Schema WG actively
maintained this specification:
http://www.w3.org/TR/2004/REC-xmlschema-0-20041028/ 

On the other hand the WS-Policy Primer was published as a WG Note since that WG
explicitly decided it did NOT want to maintain the specification:
http://www.w3.org/TR/2007/NOTE-ws-policy-primer-20071112/ 

/paulc

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Received on Tuesday, 31 May 2011 19:21:37 UTC