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Organize a Recommendation Track Transition

This Guidebook is the collected wisdom of the W3C Group Chairs and other collaborators.

About This Document

This resource describes the internal W3C Technical Report publication processes. A companion document provides more information about roles involved in these processes and interactions with the W3C Communications Team. A comparison of requirements across all document types is available.

Steps for Transition to Proposed Recommendation

Once the Process Document requirements for the transition to Proposed Recommendation have been satisfied (see section 7.4.4 under "Entrance Criteria"), W3C follows the steps described below to complete the transition. These steps are grouped by theme. They are not strictly ordered; in practice, some steps are completed in parallel. For instance, groups often manage the transition request/meeting steps in parallel with the publication request steps.

Note: If your specification involves an Internet Media Type, before the transition to Proposed Recommendation, see also How to Register an Internet Media Type for a W3C Specification for information about how the W3C liaisons to the IETF track the registration process.

Transition request

• The Team Contact reviews the (Team-only) pre-publication steps.
• At least one week prior to an expected meeting with the Director, the Chair sends a transition request to the Director/CEO: timbl@w3.org, ralph@w3.org, plh@w3.org, cc'ing w3t-comm@w3.org and chairs@w3.org .
• The Team Contact organizes a transition meeting with the Director to discuss the request.
• The Director approves the transition request.

Publication and Transition Planning

• The Document Contact prepares the document in accordance with pubrules and develops a proposed publication schedule. The title page date is chosen based on the anticipated publication schedule. Note: Director approval is required for some namespace URIs; see URIs for W3C Namespaces for details.
• Before sending the publication request, the Document Contact SHOULD install the document in its final location. The Document Contact MAY request publication of a document that is not yet installed at its final location, but in this case MUST provide installation instructions to the Webmaster.
• Note: We instituted a temporary publication policy change beginning 31 March 2009. Publications will take place Tuesdays and Thursdays; only one day's notice is required. To ensure that Webmaster and Communications Team resources are available for publication, at least one day (temporarily, instead of five days in general) prior to the anticipated publication date the Document Contact sends a publication request to the Webmaster at webreq@w3.org, optionally cc'ing w3c-archive@w3.org (which has a Member-visible archive).
• The Team Contact sends a draft transition announcement to the Communications Team at w3t-comm@w3.org.

Form and Mailing List Preparation

• The Team Contact ensures that there is a mailing list with a public archive available for comments; use the mailing list request form. The Team Contact also ensures that there is a mailing list with a Team-only archive available for AC Representative comments; this list is cited from the review form.
• The Communications Team builds a Proposed Recommendation review form that the Team Contact and Activity Lead (or Domain Lead) review for correctness. Note: At the current time, WBS review forms are generated from installed documents, but before the Webmaster completes publication.

Publication and Transition Announcement

• After coordination with the Communications Team on the transition announcement timing (especially those accompanied by press releases; see more about interactions with the Communications Team), the Webmaster completes publication and notifies the person who sent the request, cc'ing webreq@w3.org and w3t-comm@w3.org. Publication SHOULD precede the transition announcement by only a small amount of time.
• The W3C Communications Team sends a transition announcement to w3c-ac-members@w3.org and chairs@w3.org and on the W3C home page.
• The Chair SHOULD forward the announcement to the Working Group's public mailing list taking caution not to send any Member-confidential information to a public list.

Note: The Working Group SHOULD NOT publish a (new) revision of a Proposed Recommendation before the end of the (current) review period.

Transition request

The message subject line and body SHOULD identify this as a "transition request"; see above for where to send the request. A Proposed Recommendation transition request MUST include:

1. Document title, URIs, estimated publication date
2. The document Abstract and Status sections, either by reference (e.g., the URI to the document) or direct inclusion.

Furthermore, the transition request provides evidence that the group has satisfied the transition requirements. The questions and observations in the subsections below provide examples of what SHOULD be in the transition request to help the Director assess whether the group has satisfied the transition requirements. The transition request SHOULD be organized so that it serves as the basis for the agenda of the meeting with the Director.

Note: In general, the Director will not approve a request to advance to Proposed Recommendation status if there are any open "exclusion opportunities" under the W3C Patent Policy (per the Patent Policy FAQ, question 24) or any Patent Advisory Groups (PAGs) currently discussing the document (per the Patent Policy FAQ, question 29).

Record of the decision to request the transition

• The request SHOULD include a link to the meeting minutes or email announcing the group's decision to request the transition.

Report of important changes to the document

• Have there been any important changes to the document since the previous transition? Include, for example, a link to a change log where important changes are highlighted.
• Would these changes invalidate someone's earlier review? If there have been substantial changes to the document since the previous transition (except for the removal of feature at risk), the Working Group must republish the document as a Working Draft.
• Were features at risk removed?
• If this specification is a revision of a previous Recommendation, does the document clearly state the relation of this version to the previous one? For instance, does it supersede or obsolete the previous Recommendation? Where is this stated (e.g., the status section)? Does the specification explain whether authors should create content according to the previous or current version? Does the specification explain whether processors should continue to process content according to the previous Recommendation?
• If there will be two Recommendations of different major revision numbers, does the newer specification explain the relationship?

Evidence that the document satisfies group's requirements

• Have the requirements changed since the previous transition? Are any requirements previously satisfied no longer satisfied? Are any requirements previously unsatisfied now satisfied?

Evidence that dependencies with other groups met (or not)

• Does this specification have any normative references to W3C specifications that are not yet Proposed Recommendations? Note: In general, documents do not advance to Recommendation with normative references to W3C specifications that are not yet Recommendations.
• Is there evidence that additional dependencies related to implementation have been satisfied?

Evidence that the document has received wide review (e.g., as shown in an issues list)

• Was there review from implementers?
• Any review from other organizations?

Evidence that issues have been formally addressed

• Include a link to an issues list that indicates that the Group has been responsive to reviewers who have raised issues since the previous transition. The Director's expectations are that, as a document advances, the Working Group will keep an increasingly precise record of how it has formally addressed each issue.
• For changes in the issues list since the previous transition:
  • Highlight issues where the Group has declined to make a change, with rationale. See also Clarification: tables summarizing review Tim Berners-Lee (Tue, Feb 15 2000).
  • Highlight issues where the Group has not satisfied a reviewer and has either not yet responded to the reviewer, or the reviewer has not yet acknowledged the Group's decision.
  • Show, without highlighting:
    • Issues where the Working Group has accepted a proposed change.
    • Issues where the Working Group has clarified the specification to the satisfaction of the reviewer.

Objections

• Have there been any objections since the previous transition?
• For each objection, is there a record of the decision, the objection, and attempts to satisfy the reviewer?

Implementation information

• Have the default requirements of the Process Document been satisfied (e.g., implementation of each feature, preferably two implementations)?
• If there were any additional implementation requirements established by the group, were they satisfied?
• The request MUST Include a link to a final implementation report, or, if there is no such report, rationale why the Director should approve the request nonetheless.

Patent disclosures

• Has anything changed on the patent disclosure page since the previous transition? Have there been any incomplete or problematic disclosures?
• Are there any open exclusion opportunities? See Patent Policy FAQ question 24: The W3C Team will not, however, start a Proposed Recommendation review period until all current exclusion opportunities for a given specification have ended.
• If the group is not using IPP: Does the disclosure page conform to the patent policy requirements?

Transition Meeting with the Director

For a Proposed Recommendation transition, the convention is to hold a transition meeting attended by:

• The Team contact(s)
• The Domain Leader (or someone appointed by them), who generally chairs the meeting.
• The CEO
• The Director should be invited to attend the meeting if the transition involves contentious issues such as IPR, technical or other concerns.
• The Working Group Chair(s)
• Others invited by the Domain Leader (or whoever is chairing the transition meeting)
• In the event that the specification significantly affects the work of another WG, a (non-Team) representative of that Group should be invited to the call.

Note: Per announcement to the Chairs, beginning in February 2007, the Comm Team and QA do not generally attend transition meetings.

The Team Contact is responsible for the execution of the following (under the supervision of the Domain Leader):

1. Scheduling the meeting. To allow chairs of WGs with dependencies and other commenters time to review the treatment of last call comments in the disposition of comments document, the transition request MUST be sent a minimum of seven days prior to the transition meeting.
2. Reserving a teleconference bridge
3. Choosing a scribe prior to the meeting. Note: The CEO, Director, and Comm Team representative do not generally scribe these meetings.
4. Ensuring that the meeting record is distributed to the participants. The meeting record (typically a link to an IRC log) must include the decision, and should highlight all recommendations. The meeting record should be sent to all participants (Team and Member), and MUST be cc'ed to w3t-archive@w3.org.

Sample agenda

Administrative

1. Is everyone here?
2. Confirmation of Chair, Scribe
3. Are any changes required to the agenda?

Review of the transition request

In particular, review those items highlighted as requiring the Director's attention.

Decision

The Director assesses whether the W3C Process has been followed and whether there is sufficient consensus to advance the technical report. In most cases the decision to make the transition is made during the teleconference. However the decision could take up to two weeks if any difficult issues arise during the meeting. The Director may delegate the W3C decision; see Team processes for TR publications.

Next steps

1. If the decision is negative: how do we repair the problem? what happens next? who does what? Note: If documents have been copied to /TR space, please remove them.
2. If the decision is positive: how do we announce this decision? When? What is the plan and schedule for any communications opportunities, including Member testimonials? Any action items from this meeting?

Some reasons for declining a request to advance

• The technical report has been substantively modified since the previous transition. In this case, the document is returned to the Working Group for further work.
• The Director is not satisfied with how the Working Group has addressed issues.
• The Working Group has requested to advance despite a Formal Objection and the Director is not satisfied with the Working Group's rationale.
• The Director believes that special entrance criteria have not been satisfied.

Publication Request

A publication request is an assertion from the Document Contact that the document satisfies the pubrules requirements. The subject line and body SHOULD identify this as a "publication request"; see above for where to send the request. A publication request MUST include the following information.

1. Document title and URI(s). Document URI requirements are described in Publication Rules.
2. A single sentence description of the specification (for communication purposes on the "current status" pages). The sentence may be taken from the abstract.
3. A proposed publication schedule.
4. Record of approval of the transition request.

Scheduling Publication

The Document Contact negotiates a publication date with the Webmaster. Each publication request SHOULD propose a publication date, which SHOULD be at least five days later. The title page date SHOULD be the same as, or shortly before, the proposed publication date. If the request does not include a proposed publication date, the Webmaster MAY consider the title page date as the proposed publication date.

If it becomes apparent that a publication date will be well after a title page date, the Webmaster SHOULD ask the Document Contact to resubmit a revised document with a more current title page date.

When scheduling publication, please note that publishing "blackouts" occur at the end of the calendar year and around certain W3C events such as AC meetings and All-Group meetings. The Communications Team announces these publishing moratoria with approximately six months notice. The announcements are linked from the Chairs' Guidebook.

Publication

In order to ensure publication standards, upon receiving a publication request the Webmaster SHALL make a best effort to verify that the document satisfies the pubrules requirements except for the accessibility requirements of section 1.6. The Webmaster SHALL publish the document (cf. the Webmaster's guide) if the following conditions have been met:

1. The publication request is complete, and
2. The document satisfies the pubrules requirements verified by the Webmaster.

Otherwise the Webmaster SHALL NOT publish. In this case, the Webmaster SHALL provide details to the person who sent the request about which requirements have not been satisfied.

The Webmaster SHALL NOT publish the document until the date on the title page or later. The Webmaster publishes the document by updating the appropriate technical report index and updating the latest version link, and then announcing publication as described above.

Transition Announcement

A Proposed Recommendation transition announcement MUST include the following information (please use the Team-only transition announcement template as a starting point) :

1. That this is a Proposed Recommendation transition announcement.
2. Document title, URIs.
3. Instructions for providing feedback.
4. Review end date.
5. Link to information about the review; generally this is a link to an online form (created by the Communications Team). The following information from the transition request MUST be available (generally in the form):
   • title, abstract, and status. Note: It is useful to draw the reviewer's attention in the review form to important information, even if some of that information is duplicated in the status section due to pubrules requirements.
   • implementation information
   • information about changes
   • information about wide review (link to an issues list)
6. Information about any Formal Objections.
7. Link to a public (home) page for the group that produced the document.