w3c / w3c/process

Say something about the difference between a Note and a Note Draft

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Type: Enhancement
Dominant language
HTML
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262
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Description

https://www.w3.org/policies/process/drafts/#Note has

Some Notes are developed through successive Note Drafts before publication as a full Notes, while others are published directly as a Note. There are few formal requirements to publish a document as a Note or Note Draft, and they have no standing as a recommendation of W3C but are simply documents preserved for historical reference.

When groups are advancing a document toward being a Note, they're often unsure about when it's appropriate to publish as a Note Draft, which causes them to waste time discussing what a Note Draft signifies.

My sense of the difference is that Notes have WG consensus about their contents, while Note Drafts are just documents that the group has agreed to use as the basis for some work toward a Note. I support this by referring to the definition of Working Drafts:

Working Drafts do not necessarily represent a consensus of the Working Group with respect to their content, and do not imply any endorsement by W3C or its members beyond agreement to work on a general area of technology. Nevertheless the Working Group decided to adopt the Working Draft as the basis for their work at the time of adoption.

However, there's no necessary connection between the meaning of a Working Draft and a Note Draft, so it would be nice for the process to give a meaning for Note Drafts too.

Contributor guide

Open the contributing guide

First steps

  1. Read the whole issue, then the project's contributing guide.
  2. Comment on the issue to say you are picking it up — it saves two people doing the same work.
  3. Fork the repository and make your change on a branch.
  4. Open a pull request that references the issue number.

Research direction

Read the process document's sections on Note, Note Draft, and Working Drafts, starting with the linked drafts section. Determine, with the Working Group, whether the document should define a distinction or guidance for Note Drafts; done means the agreed meaning is clearly documented in the process text.

Written by the indexing model from the issue text.

Assessment

Tech stack
html
Domain
documentation
Issue type
Documentation
Difficulty
5/5
Estimated time
Over a week
Activity status
Stale
Clarity
Needs clarification
Newbie friendliness
35/100

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