REQDOC: Working Drafts and Note (W3C Adv Board Resolution)

At 4:01 PM +0100 2/26/02, Ian B. Jacobs wrote:
>Resolved:
>...
>   * People should infer from the label "Working Draft"
>     that W3C has allocated resources to work on this document.
>     This usually means that at publication time, a Working Group
>     is actively working on the document.
>...
>   * Since no label will adequately capture the authors' intent in
>     publishing a document, and since the Advisory Board does not
>     recommend introducing additional document status labels, the AB
>     expects the status section of each document published by
>     W3C to convey important information such as:
>
>     - Commitment to respond to comments (as of publication time)
>       and email address for comments;
>     - Level of consensus about the document;
>     - Purpose of document (e.g., requirements document);
>     - Expected destiny of document, as in:
>
>       * The Lather Working Group expects this document
>         to become a W3C Recommendation.
>
>       * This Working Draft captures the current set of
>         requirements for the Lather 1.0 specification. The
>         Lather Working Group expects to update it to reflect
>         changes in requirements until such time as
>         Lather 1.0 becomes a W3C Recommendation.
>
>       * The Lather Working Group expects that this document
>         will be published as a Note to supplement the Lather 1.0
>         Recommendation as rationale and background.
>
>       * The Lather Working Group expects that this document
>         will serve as input to a future W3C Working Group
>         dedicated to Shampoo.

The above is the recommended W3C policy per a recent advisory board 
meeting discussing Notes vs. Working Drafts.  As you can see, they 
have made it clear that they believe the term "Working Draft" should 
be used if a WG is actively working on a document - as we are on this 
draft.  Further, they suggest specific mention of status w/respect to 
current document (i.e. in our case, that we still intend to change it 
before final release)

Based on this, I suggest the following

1) We should call the requirement document a Working Note
2) We should include the following words:



(Relaces 2nd paragraph in the Web Ont Reqs Document)

This document is a W3C Working Draft. This Working Draft captures the 
current set of requirements for the OWL 1.0 specification. The Web 
Ontology Working Group expects to update it to reflect changes in 
requirements until such time as OWL becomes a W3C Recommendation.  It 
is inappropriate to use W3C Working Drafts as reference materials or 
to cite them as other than "work in progress."

- this makes us compliant with the AB policy above and should help us 
move through the pub process more smoothly.

  JH







-- 
Professor James Hendler				  hendler@cs.umd.edu
Director, Semantic Web and Agent Technologies	  301-405-2696
Maryland Information and Network Dynamics Lab.	  301-405-6707 (Fax)
AV Williams Building, Univ of Maryland		  College Park, MD 20742
http://www.cs.umd.edu/users/hendler

Received on Tuesday, 26 February 2002 10:45:01 UTC