Re: Formalizing requirements for specification changes.

Hey folks!

I'm pinging this thread for visibility after the US holidays. In the
absence of objections or substantive feedback, I plan to push the templates
sketched in https://github.com/mikewest/webappsec-templates/tree/main to
WebAppSec's repositories on Monday. I'd appreciate y'all weighing in,
either positively or negatively, on
https://github.com/w3c/webappsec/issues/688. :)

Thanks!

-mike


On Thu, Nov 27, 2025 at 11:50 AM Mike West <mkwst@google.com> wrote:

> After some more discussion at TPAC
> <https://github.com/w3c/webappsec/blob/main/meetings/2025/2025-11-TPAC-minutes.md#admin-path-to-cr-maintenance-guardrails>,
> I think we landed on general agreement in the room that it would be
> reasonable to formalize requirements for specifications we think have moved
> beyond incubation into a more "living" model, and also that leaning heavily
> on WHATWG's well-proven templates was probably a good idea.
>
> To that end, I put
> https://github.com/mikewest/webappsec-templates/tree/main together as a
> demonstration of a proposal for us to add to specs' repositories. It does
> ~3 things:
>
>    1.
>
>    Creates a template for pull requests that asks for signals from
>    browser engines, web platform tests, bugs to be filed against implementers,
>    and a bug to be filed against MDN.
>    2.
>
>    Creates two issue templates: one for "issues", another for "features".
>    This division seems quite helpful for WHATWG specs, and I think it's
>    reasonable to push our specs in the same direction.
>    3.
>
>    Additions to our CONTRIBUTING.md that make those requirements clear.
>
> Based on our experience with Subresource Integrity, I'd suggest that we
> merge these templates into most* of our specs.
>
> WDYT? https://github.com/w3c/webappsec/issues/688 would be a fantastic
> place to weigh in.
>
> *DBSC is the only one that seems to me to still be in enough flux that it
> might benefit from a lower bar, but I'd ask that specification's editors to
> weigh in on that).
> -mike
>