Re: Normative references to works in progress

Since this discussion stopped last September, there has been some more 
discussion of a specific case, some of that in private mail, with some 
of it visible to W3C members at 
https://lists.w3.org/Archives/Member/w3c-archive.  I'm bringing the 
discussion of the general case back to this public list.

On 2 Sept 2021, chaals wrote:

> The rational answer, and the one that drove W3C's old policy on how 
> to link to unstable documents, is to asses each case and whether the 
> status of the referenced document is accurately described in the 
> document that makes a normative reference.

That makes sense to me.

As some context and as a point of comparison, the IETF has some rather 
extensive discussion of when and how to allow down references to 
stable documents at a lower standards maturity level.  They do not 
allow references to unstable docs, e.g. our "Editor's Drafts".  Here's 
an example of one of their procedures:

    o  A note is included in the reference text that indicates that the
       reference is to a target document of a lower maturity level, that
       some caution should be used since it may be less stable than the
       document from which it is being referenced, and, optionally,
       explaining why the downward reference is appropriate. [RFC4897,
       Section 3]

> However there is a fundamental disagreement on whether the core 
> value is consensus in a multi-stakeholder model, or what three 
> implementors decide is going to happen in their market-dominating 
> software. So I expect in certain cases like the specific one at 
> hand, the "right answer" will still be contested.

That values difference seems like it would more affect what technical 
features get included in the specs at all, not things like the 
warnings contemplated by RFC4897, above.

The IETF's wgchairs and rfc-interest mailing lists have a recent 
thread about other SDOs referencing works in progress.  One of the 
observations there from Deborah Brungard was:

> As for convincing other SDOs, usually they have a high level group 
> making these decisions. The group making the rules knows about the 
> maturity status, copyright, IPR, etc. It is not done at a working 
> level.

Inspired by Deborah, I'm wondering if this sort of discussion should 
be with the WHATWG's Steering Group rather than just document editors.

-- Sam

Received on Wednesday, 30 March 2022 15:41:21 UTC