Please review CG Report requirements

[ianbjacobs]

Hi all,

In looking at a sample Solid technical report such as:
https://solidproject.org/TR/protocol

I would like to draw the CG's attention to our CG Report requirements:
https://www.w3.org/community/reports/reqs/

Among them notably, we have style requirements (to help people understand the status of documents) and copyright statement requirements (per the CG policies), etc.

I'd like to request that the CG make appropriate changes based on these requirements. Don't hesitate to contact me on team-community-process if you have questions.

Cheers,
Ian

[1] https://www.w3.org/community/about/process/summary/

[ianbjacobs]

@csarven, once the reports have been reformatted, it would be great to register them in the W3C CG Report system by way of the "publish" button that appears on the CG's home page when you are (1) logged in and (2) chair of a CG. For more, see:
https://www.w3.org/community/about/faq/#how-do-we-publish-a-report

Thanks!

[csarven]

Thanks @ianbjacobs ! Am/we're aware.

Short response: Going forward, the CG will produce CG-DRAFT/FINAL reports as you recommend as well as per Solid CG charter.

Longer response:

The latest published versions (what you see published under solidproject.org/TR/ ) and the deliverables referred by the proposed Solid WG charter have been using the Solid Process (which is no longer applicable to the CG). This is only one part of the reason why Solid CG hasn't produced a CG-DRAFT/FINAL. Going forward, the CG will follow its CG charter (became effective 2023-09-01), which is aligned with W3C's processes and recommendations.

To the best of Solid CG's and W3C contacts' ( @pchampin @rigow ) knowledge:

• Report Requirements is acknowledged, however CGs are not prohibited from producing documents that are not CG-DRAFT/FINAL, with any status, license, at any location, or using any particular stylesheets/scripts (=we're aware that they're not or equivalent to W3C "Community Submissions").
• Deliverables of a WG charter or proposed specifications are not required to have a CG-DRAFT/FINAL status in order for them to be accepted as part of a WG charter proposal and followed-up in Recommendation/Note/Registry Tracks. There is no mention in, e.g., W3C Process or W3C Recommendation Track Readiness Best Practices. On a related note, the common understanding is that a "Working Group will not adopt new proposals until they have matured through the [CG] or another similar incubation phase.". This seems to be satisfactory for Solid CG's work items, i.e., without CG-DRAFT/FINAL status, being picked up by a WG charter.
• We have taken steps to make sure that copyright/licensing in the CG charter will remain compatible with W3C policies and have acknowledged that agreements made through CG-DRAFT/FINALs will better help to transition works from the CG to a WG.

Happy to be corrected on anything above. And happy to hear any additional insights you can offer.

Again, happy to produce CG-DRAFT/FINALs (in particular proposed deliverables of the WG charter) and follow up with the publication process.

We will also follow-up with updating CG's Contributing Guide to reflect any remaining changes related to publication of documents/reports.

Lastly, I understand the differences between what can be practised, required, or prohibited by W3C in a CG (and elsewhere) may be confusing to some or even many. I can only recommend that existing CG requirements, W3C Process, and other guides are updated to further help minimise these confusions for anyone, and to better communicate expectations. If you'd like me/us to follow-up on this with you / W3C Team in another thread/repository, happy to do so.

[ianbjacobs]

Hi @csarven,

CGs are not prohibited from producing documents that are not CG-DRAFT/FINAL, with any status, license, at any
location, or using any particular stylesheets/scripts (=we're aware that they're not or equivalent to W3C "Community
Submissions").

That is also my understanding.

Deliverables of a WG charter or proposed specifications are not required to have a CG-DRAFT/FINAL status
in order for them to be accepted in Recommendation/Note/Registry Tracks.

That is also my understanding (but not directly relevant to the current thread about CG Report requirements).

On a related note, the common understanding is that a "Working Group will not adopt new proposals until they
have matured through the [CG] or another similar incubation phase.".

Here is what the Advisory Board wrote in 2016 [1] on that topic: "Strongly Recommended: Charters do not list specs as deliverables, and WGs do not publish FWPDs, until there is rough consensus across stakeholders that the spec solves a real problem, is likely to be implemented, and is likely to be used on the Web. This consensus could emerge from an incubation phase in WICG or another CG, or in a WG that has an established culture of taking and vetting suggestions from its public mailing list."

[1] https://www.w3.org/Guide/standards-track/#criteria

We have taken steps to make sure that copyright/licensing in the CG charter will remain compatible with
W3C policies and have acknowledged that agreements made through CG-DRAFT/FINALs will better
help to transition works from the CG to a WG.

Our FAQ [2] includes this:

Q. Can I make it a condition of joining a Community or Business Group or publishing a Report that people must agree to licensing terms beyond the CLA/FSA?
A. No.

Is the expectation that people cannot join the Solid CG unless they agree to the terms and conditions of the charter?

[2] https://www.w3.org/community/about/faq/#can-i-make-it-a-condition-of-participation-in-a-community-or-business-group-that-people-must-agree-to-licensing-terms-beyond-the-clafsa

Lastly, I understand the differences between what can be practised, required, or prohibited by W3C in a CG (and elsewhere) may be confusing to some or even many. I can only recommend that existing CG requirements, W3C Process, and other guides are updated to further help minimise these confusions for anyone, and to better communicate expectations. If you'd like me/us to follow-up on this with you / W3C Team in another thread/repository, happy to do so.

We welcome suggestions on team-community-process@w3.org. Thank you!

[michielbdejong]

@ianbjacobs the list of draft reports I filled in on https://www.w3.org/community/solid/ during our meeting today was a copy of https://solidproject.org/TR/#work-items

But since then I got a message from @VirginiaBalseiro saying this list is incorrect and not conforming to https://www.w3.org/community/reports/reqs/. I was also unaware that this had been an open issue since October.

As we discussed there is an 'add' button but no 'remove' button. Can you please remove the list again? Sorry for the hassle!

[csarven]

I will PR a CG-DRAFT (and eventually FINAL) of the Solid Protocol based on ED. I have the CG-DRAFT ready but was waiting on the possible resolution of some of the items in the last milestone if the Group deemed them to be ready. There is no showstopper to have a CG-DRAFT of what we have, and I think we can go ahead with it. I can PR in the next week or so (keeping in mind travels). We (CG) can perhaps pick it up on 2024-05-08 ( @VirginiaBalseiro ).

We can publish other Work Items as CG-DRAFT/FINALs once they're ready and agreed upon.

[ianbjacobs]

Hi all, If these are indeed reports of the CG, then it is important that they adhere to the CG report requirements [1], including the copyright statement, use of logos, boilerplate text, etc. Let me know how I can help on this. Regarding the link from the CG’s home page, I think we can leave them in place since the more important bit is that the spec styles be updated. (And I’m assuming the URLs will point at the updated drafts.) Thank you, Ian [1] https://www.w3.org/community/reports/reqs/ [2] https://www.w3.org/community/solid/

…

On Apr 25, 2024, at 9:57 AM, Sarven Capadisli ***@***.***> wrote: I will PR a CG-DRAFT (and eventually FINAL) of the Solid Protocol based on ED. I have the CG-DRAFT ready but was waiting on the possible resolution of some of the items in the last milestone if the Group wanted them in there. There is no showstopper to have a CG-DRAFT of what we have, and we can go ahead with it. I can PR next in the week or so (keeping in mind travels). We (CG) can perhaps pick it up on 2024-05-08. We can publish other Work Items as CG-DRAFT/FINALs once they're ready and agreed upon. — Reply to this email directly, view it on GitHub, or unsubscribe. You are receiving this because you were mentioned.Message ID: ***@***.***>

-- Ian Jacobs ***@***.***> https://www.w3.org/People/Jacobs/ Tel: +1 917 450 8783

[VirginiaBalseiro]

@ianbjacobs the list of draft reports I filled in on https://www.w3.org/community/solid/ during our meeting today was a copy of https://solidproject.org/TR/#work-items

@michielbdejong can you clarify what "our meeting" is referring to?

[csarven]

@ianbjacobs I think we already covered this earlier in the issue and elsewhere.

Just for clarity for those not heavily involved in the CG or who need a summary:

Our process prior to the Solid CG Charter didn't include publishing W3C CG Reports. The documents that are currently referenced from Solid Work Items are not "W3C CG Reports" as it stands but we're transitioning to it. We have documents with status along the lines of editors/unofficial drafts, living documents, notes, and lowercase technical reports - was never intended to be conflated with W3C Technical Reports, not hosted w3.org, not using W3C logo, not implying W3C endorsed, among other things to say the least.

---

@ianbjacobs :

• To (better) ensure persistence and immutability, can the CG publish CG-FINALs under w3.org? Would you recommend that we do?
• Are CG-DRAFTs intended to be mutable or immutable snapshots? As I understand it, there can be multiple CG-DRAFTs with different versions of a report.
• As mentioned, majority of the documents listed under our Work Items are drafts of sorts. So, related to the above question, should we consider all of the documents as potentially equivalent to CG-DRAFTs or should we only publicise what may be deemed to be mature / advanced enough to be CG-DRAFT (and later CG-FINALs)? For instance, in loose terms, the documents that are versioned TRs (published at https://solidproject.org/TR/{YYYY}/{shortname-YYYMMDD}) would qualify for CG-DRAFT, but I'm not sure how to approach the others in a fair way that both reflects their maturity as well as group's consensus.

Related:

• Reference to W3C Group in standards/types w3c/tr-pages#102 - as discussed in the issue, this is rather important to distinguish ongoing WIP / drafts (along the lines of ED/UD) from CG-DRAFT publications.
• Include "Success Criteria" (or "Exit Criteria") #373
• ...

[ianbjacobs]

@VirginiaBalseiro, @michielbdejong and I were chatting about CGs in the context of another group.

[ianbjacobs]

@csarven, @VirginiaBalseiro, and @michielbdejong,

If these documents are not (yet) CG Reports, please do not indicate that they were published by the Solid Community Group. Instead, please indicate which individuals drafted them. Because these documents are not CG deliverables, please remove mention of the CLA. (Indeed, you refer to the MIT license in the documents that I looked at.)

In other words: these are either CG Reports published by the group under the CLA and consistent with the requirements for CG Reports, or they are some other kind of document that has no relationship to any W3C process or group.

Regarding your questions above:

• All Final Reports must be published on w3.org (per the CG process). The recommended way to do that is via the cg-reports repo.
• CG drafts can be living documents; they do not need to be immutable (but can be).

[elf-pavlik]

CG drafts can be living documents; they do not need to be immutable (but can be).

Most Solid drafts had versioned snapshots published as "WD" and living documents available as "ED".
Many documents use Bikeshed, which seems only to have two options—CG-DRAFT and CG-FINAL. I understand that no templates equivalent to ED and WD are available for Community Groups. Until finalized, should they use the CG-DRAFT template? We should still be able to have immutable releases similar to "WD" tagged with 0.x version numbers.

Linking from the 0.x tagged immutable version (~WD) to the latest version on the main branch (~ED) might be slightly nuanced since the link would commonly be labeled Editor's Draft. Is there a recommended term that could be used in CG drafts to label that link?

[ianbjacobs]

I am still getting up to speed on the status and plans for these documents. But if a document is not yet a Draft (or Final) CG Report, it should not claim to be the product of the CG (and not use the CG styles, license, etc.). If a call would be useful, let's find time next week.

[VirginiaBalseiro]

If a call would be useful, let's find time next week.

That would be very useful, thank you! A number of us will be attending Solid Symposium next week and thus unavailable, but would you be able to join our weekly CG call on Wednesday May 8th at 14:00 UTC?