RE: Superseded warning on 2005 Process Document

> How do we make sure these are kept up to date?

Many other standards organizations do “systematic reviews” (ie every five years) to determine if a standards should be withdrawn or continued to be used.  Maybe W3C should consider some sort of “systematic review” of documents published on the TR page?

/paulc

Paul Cotton, Microsoft Canada
17 Eleanor Drive, Ottawa, Ontario K2E 6A3
Tel: (425) 705-9596 Fax: (425) 936-7329

From: Tim Berners-Lee [mailto:timbl@w3.org]
Sent: Wednesday, April 15, 2015 11:27 PM
To: Jeff Jaffe
Cc: Paul Cotton; Charles McCathie Nevile (chaals@yandex-team.ru); public-w3process@w3.org; Ian Jacobs
Subject: Re: Superseded warning on 2005 Process Document



Sent from my portable device.

On 15 Apr 2015, at 15:45, Jeff Jaffe <jeff@w3.org<mailto:jeff@w3.org>> wrote:
Paul,

Great comment.  We now say:



"On 1 August 2014, W3C began a transition away from this document; see the current W3C Process Document."

This sort of relevant and actually correct comment is the sort of thing I wish we would learn to put in the status of every document..

These things of course need to be reviewed with time. So while it interesting to archive the language which was used when something is put out for comment
It is also useful to note for example later that the time for comments is over ... The "status of this document at the time of its publication". As opposed to a styled visibly  pinned on annotation ... How do we make sure these are kept up to date?

Hopefully that addresses your issue.

Jeff
On 4/9/2015 2:30 PM, Paul Cotton wrote:
The 2005 Process Document now contains the following warning:
http://www.w3.org/2005/10/Process-20051014/

World Wide Web Consortium Process Document
14 October 2005

This document has been superseded. Please see the most recent version<http://www.w3.org/Consortium/Process/>.
Given the large number of W3C specifications that continue to be processed under the 2005 Process Document I find the word “superseded” too strong and misleading.

BTW a common Web dictionary [1] defines “supersede” as meaning “to set aside or cause to be set aside as void, useless, or obsolete, usually in favor of something mentioned; make obsolete.  The 2005 Process Document is not yet “useless” or “obsolete”.  In fact the notification of the membership of the new Process 2014 document makes it very clear in which cases the 2005 Process  document is still in effect:
https://lists.w3.org/Archives/Member/w3c-ac-forum/2014JanMar/0104.html  (member only link)

BTW I know that this same warning occurs in older Process Documents where I believe it is appropriate.
http://www.w3.org/2004/02/Process-20040205/


I would like to suggest that the note in the 2005 Process Document be changed to the following:

“The W3C is transitioning away from this document to a more recent version<http://www.w3.org/Consortium/Process/>.”

Note that I was going to try to predict when the 2005 Process would actually be “superseded” but the complex 5 cases described in https://lists.w3.org/Archives/Member/w3c-ac-forum/2014JanMar/0104.html  (member only link) make this too difficult to do.

/paulc
HTML WG co-chair

[1] http://dictionary.reference.com/browse/superseded


Paul Cotton, Microsoft Canada
17 Eleanor Drive, Ottawa, Ontario K2E 6A3
Tel: (425) 705-9596 Fax: (425) 936-7329