small comment on the AB draft process document

Hey Charles,

I had a look at the draft AB process document:

https://dvcs.w3.org/hg/AB/raw-file/default/tr.html

First of all, thanks for doing this...

I also have some minor questions/comments.

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7.2 says that there must be a Director approval as part of the general requirement for advancement. 

7.4.1.a, FPWD publication, refers to 7.2. This means that we need the Director approval for a FPWD. This is heavier requirement than currently (at this moment, transitions that require Director approval mean transition calls, and they are only CR/PR/Rec...). 

That being said, the current practice (process?) is that FPWD is approved by the domain lead, ie, he/she may have the delegated power of the Director in that case. But that is not documented in the process document as far as I could see. If this is the intention, it is worth specifying it.

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7.4.3 says, as a first bullet item (to publish a W3C Rec)

"- must republish the document, identifying it as the basis of a Request for Recommendation."

First I presumed that what was meant here was the availability of an up-to-date editor's draft, which must be produced for the transition. But that is not considered as 'publishing', formally, so I am not sure. But then... here is what it says later in the section for all recommendations: 

[[[
• The Director must announce the provisional approval of a Request for publication of a W3C Recommendation to the Advisory Committee.
• The Advisory Committee review of the technical report must continue at least 28 days after the announcement of provisional approval to publish the Edited Recommendation as a W3C Recommendation.
]]]


Does it mean that a document is published that is, for all good and purposes, the final recommendation, but the AC has a month to object?  In which case the document's status on the Web should say something like "this document has the provisional approval of the director but the AC may still oppose it", as opposed to the final document that says "this document has the approval of the AC". Meaning that the two documents are not identical before and after the AC approval. Isn't it what the current PR is all about? So why not calling a cat a cat?

The only difference seems to be that there is no need for a formal transition call to publish a Rec in the new process, which sounds fine to me although, truth must be said, that transition is usually a matter of an email these days, it rarely means a really heavy administration. Ie, the simplification is not significant...

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Just as a bike-shedding remark:-): I hate the term "Last Call Candidate Recommendation". Our process is already a bit opaque, but using such a term would make it even worse... Maybe some of you native anglo-saxons can come up with a better term! Of course, we can just call it, surprise, surprise, "Candidate Recommendation" :-) 

(Do not take me wrong: I am all in favour of merging the current LC and CR in one step as a simplification of the process, I am just annoyed by the name...)

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7.6.2, classes #1 and #2 of changes: does it mean that the Working Group (or the team) is allowed to make changes on the documents directly, in situ, on the TR pages? Or does it mean that a new document is created (with a new dated URI) by the Working Group, which is then silently put up on /TR (maybe with a home page announcement)?



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Ivan Herman, W3C 
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