Retire Proposed Recommendation

[frivoal]

As discussed in #861, the Proposed Recommendation phase of the REC track exists only to support an AC Review during the transition of a document from CR to REC. We can simplify the Process a good deal by doing away with Proposed Recommendation entirely, and doing the AC Review on the CR that we want to promote to REC. Then, if the AC Review is successful (in addition to the other criteria), we could publish the REC directly.

This Pull Request does just that. It keeps all the criteria that were present at the CR→PR transition, as well those of the PR→REC transition, and combines them into a CR→REC transition.

This allows for a simplification of terminology, a simplification of Process text, a reduction in the number of states described in the REC track diagram, and a reduction of work needed by the WG and the Team (one transition to request instead of two, one less publication to make); all without any changes about what is expected of a Recommendation.

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Preview | Diff

[chaals]

Looks like a good draft (on a skim of the github diff rather than a very careful review, so faar).

[frivoal]

Editorial language improvements.

All accepted. Thanks!

[frivoal]

From the AB's last meeting:

RESOLUTION: The AB is interested in pursuing the retirement of the Proposed Recommendation Phase, and asks the Process CG to work out the details.

[plehegar]

One clarification might needed. To elevate a Note to a Statement, we have "During this review period, the Note must not be updated."

Is the Working Group allowed to update the CR while the review is ongoing ?

[nigelmegitt]

One clarification might needed. To elevate a Note to a Statement, we have "During this review period, the Note must not be updated."

Is the Working Group allowed to update the CR while the review is ongoing ?

[at first I was confused by this because the Note track is orthogonal to the Rec track, but on third reading I understood that you're using the quoted text as an example to carry across into the Rec track]

My reading of the bullets in §6.3.9 is that certain changes are possible, but I guess your question is more about when they can be made?:

• must show that all issues raised during the Candidate Recommendation review period have been formally addressed.
• must identify any substantive issues raised since the close of the Candidate Recommendation review period.
• must not have made any substantive changes to the document since the most recent Candidate Recommendation Snapshot, other than dropping features identified at risk.
• may have removed features identified in the Candidate Recommendation Snapshot document as at risk without republishing the specification as a Candidate Recommendation Snapshot.

[frivoal]

Is the Working Group allowed to update the CR while the review is ongoing ?

The review needs to be on a specific dated version of the document, I don't think a moving target can be reviewed. https://www.w3.org/policies/process/drafts/#ACReviewAfter provides some avenues for (limited) changes after the review, but to me, the review itself must be on a specific version.

Do you think additional text is needed to call that out? The current text seems sufficient to me, but we could add a simple explicit clause, like:

[=Working Groups=] must not [=publish=] any updated version while the [=AC Review=] is ongoing. If the review surfaces any desirable change, they must be handled according to the provisions of [[#ACReviewAfter]].