Re: 'Editorial' label and errata

On 11/18/21 10:11 AM, Ivan Herman wrote:
> In other words what this means is that if an issue is marked Editorial but 
> is /not/ an erratum, then the issue will not appear in the errata list. Is 
> this what you want?

No, that's not what we want. :)

The problem here is that people are getting confused about when to use the
labels and what effect they have. For example, Kyle told us to delete the
"Editorial" label yesterday because we don't use it. I then was like: "yeah,
let's delete it!" and only stopped as my hand hovered over the delete button
and was like "Hmm, something tells me that this is the wrong thing to do...
and maybe this is used for the errata thing?". So, both of the Editors
temporarily forgot about the importance of this label and were then unsure
about the combinatorial issues created as a result.

If the Editors can't keep this straight, I expect other WG members might not
be able to either.

Maybe this is an education issue and the Editors just need to remember these
rules:

* When an issue comes in, mark it with "PossibleErrata"
  and either "Editorial" or "Substantive".

* Classify the issue as a "v1.1 (editorial)" or "v2.0"
  issue so we know what release we intend to merge it
  into.

* After discussing with WG, replace "PossibleErrata" with
  "Errata" IF the group accepts it as an Errata. If not,
  remove "PossibleErrata", "Editorial", and "Substantive"
  labels, but maybe not the "v1.1 (editorial)" or "v2.0"
  labels.

* If we close the issue, do we unmark it as "Editorial"
  or "Substantive" if it had "Errata". I'm guessing
  the answer is "no, leave it alone and just close
  the issue".

* What happens if we use these same labels for issues?
  Should these be limited to issues, PRs, both?

I think we created this problem when we needed to work on three document
streams at the same time (v1.1, v1.2, and v2.0). In reality, we just ended up
deciding to publish v1.2 (renaming it to v1.1).

Possible ways forward:

1. We rename the "v1.1 (editorial)" label to "v1.1".
2. We keep the "Editorial" and "Errata" labels.
3. We get rid of the "PossibleErratum" label, I don't
   think it's useful... either something is Errata or
   it's not.

The problem here, of course, is that we introduce these combinatorial rules
that everyone has to keep in their heads instead of having ONE label that we
assign to an issue... either "v<MAJOR>.<MINOR> (editorial)" or
"v<MAJOR>.<MINOR> (substantive)".

So, I think to make everything easier, we might want the errata generation
script to allow us to specify the labels that should be used when including
things in the errata file. The downside there, of course, is that every W3C WG
is going to use slightly different labels -- but maybe that's ok, because
every WG uses ReSpec in slightly different ways.

The goal here is to reduce everyone's cognitive burden when tracking all of
this stuff. Just some thoughts, none of this is pressing.

-- manu

-- 
Manu Sporny - https://www.linkedin.com/in/manusporny/
Founder/CEO - Digital Bazaar, Inc.
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Received on Thursday, 18 November 2021 15:39:21 UTC