<Wilco> https://github.com/w3c/wcag-act/pull/514
Wilco: This is a proposal for the new publication process
... To streamline our rule publication process
... We need to have members from the community group join us mainly for the validation part
... The proposal makes five changes, the description underlines it and the document describes the process
... Firstly, we want to move publication off the rules to the W3C website
... We would have those rules directly on the W3C website. We would distinguished between the ones that are approved and the ones that are not, maybe through labeling, templating, etc
... Second, community group members would join this weekly meeting. In addition to review rules, we would allow the liaisons to make changes to the rules
... Smaller changes, we would have one process owned by this group
... The survey will be our CFC phase. If you don't respond to the survey, that wouldd mean you don't have an opinion on the topic.
Shadi: This is just a proposal. We want to discuss this with this group first, then with the CG, and then with AGWG that needs to approve it at the end of the day
... This tries to reduce the overhead and make the two groups work more closely
... This would give more visibility to the rules, of course making sure their status is well communicated
Trevor: Will this then be more kind of working meeting?
Wilco: I think so.
... While we are reviewing we can suggest changes, and as a group decide which changes we want to keep and which we do not
Trevor: How that process would look like? We should complete the survey and then suggest changes also via pull request?
... There might be 5 answers to the survey and 5 pull request?
Wilco: We could set up a unique pull request for people to comment
Shadi: Sometimes comments are "remove this sentence or this comma" easy to do in a pull request
... IF broader issues, maybe raising an issue would be better
Wilco: I have not fleshed out that part, definitely I do think the group should be involved in proposing changes
Trevor: If we are making changes to a rule, rule authors should be in the meeting
<shadi> +1 to Trevor -- having rule authors on the call
Trevor: Maybe a requirement?
Shadi: Probably an expectation that the rule authorsr needs to be part of the discussion
Wilco: This group will be more involved in the community group. We can work on reviews, and the final call phase will go to all of us, hopefully we will have seen the rule before it reaches final call
Kathy: Could CG respond to these surveys?
Wilco: Yes.
Kathy: I like the idea, will lead to more efficient work.
... Question for first item in the proposal. Have AGWG had a chance to provide an opinion on whether these rules should be in W3C space?
Wilco: Not yet
... I wanted to discuss with you all first, and Shadi is discussing these as well with AGWG staff contact
... If we in this groups are in agreement, we will bring this to AGWG
Kathy: If they are OK I am OK, some rules may not be quite ready. They may need more review before publishing
Wilco: I don't think we could take everything we have and put it in W3C space, we may need to go through them one at a time and decide on an individual basis
... We did not write these rules with that in mind. A lot of them can be published as proposals, others may not as they might be out of date
Daniel: I like the proposal, might help us avoid several cycles as people from the two groups will work together.
Trevor: Is WCAG 2.2 going to be published before we do this transition? Would that affect us?
Wilco: Not really.
... Maybe we should go through the pull request
... There is an introduction and then five steps to this process
... First is to draft a proposal. That would go through the CG, with three independent reviewers
... The CG has defined three variations of changes, depending on how impactful they are they have different kinds of review periods
... Final Call would be now Call for Review: big changes, two weeks
... Small changes, they go for one week
... Editorials need only three approvals and they skip the review periods
Shadi: Step 3. Rather than "Publish for implementations" it should be "Implementations Gathering" or something
Daniel: Why the change in the name for Call for Review?
Wilco: In this process it will be no longer final call anymore
... Once a PR has three approvals, and email is sent to the CG. That mail needs to go to a mailing list where everybody from the two groups is.
... That has a two-week period for review
... If there are no changes proposed, the PR is merged
... If there are changes, depending on the changes either the author implements them or the PR is taken out of the review process and is put back on the draft phase
... When the PR is merged, it goes directly to the W3C website
Kathy: Is there going to be a requirement for someone in the TF to be the liaison in each of the PR?
Wilco: It will be up to us to stay up-to-date on these changes and to be proactive about follow-ups
... We could take a look at call for reviews during meetings
Shadi: Will there be somebody responsible for making sure these changes have been made correctly?
Wilco: This will be between the commenter and the PR author
Daniel: Should commenter make their agreement explicit?
Shadi: Not the point. Actually, the signal the everybody (not just the commenter) agrees with the changes.
Wilco: Will figure that out.
Daniel: Maybe give extra time after the author has made the changes and agreed with the commenter?
Wilco: It might be a bit slow.
Shadi: Is there a minimal number of people to review these?
Wilco: At this point there would have been three approvals, this will be the notification for everybody else in the groups
... After the call for review ends, the PR is merged, and it is put in the W3C website
... Then we would have "Publish proposal for implementation"
Shadi: The term publish is a bit ambiguous, most WGs understand publish as a technical document
... Publish on the "WAI website" instead of on the "W3C website"
Trevor: Trying to look for a better title. Maybe "Publish and search for implementations"
Wilco: We could change this to "Call for Implementations"
Shadi: The first paragraph in this section could be the last one in the previous one with clear indications, and then this stage could be the "Gathering implementations" thing.
Trevor: I would be OK with that change
Kathy: Are the rules going to be in the W3C website before the first implementation? Would it be good to have at least one implementation before they go to the W3C website?
Shadi: It is difficult, some people may not want to implement until it is already in W3C space.
... We may need to be sure we communicate well which ones are "ready for implementation" and which ones are not, but wanted to have these two categories more close in the same space
Trevor: I think having the visibility of all of these together is good.
Kathy: When we look at the rules now, we don't see them until there is one implementation at least. I was not aware that it was difficult to get these implementations. If it is so hard, then I am OK as-is
Wilco: It is hard to get implementations.
... But it could get to these meetings (and this group) only when there was one implementations. This is a change, as we do need to pay attention to the "Call for review" in this new process.
Shadi: There is more work up-front, but then a lot of the work will be saved
Kathy: When it get published and marked as a proposal the next thing that will happen is that there is going to be implementations, right?
Wilco: Yes
... To check if implementations are consistent we would have CG people involved. In this case the liaison will not open an issue, they will open a PR to propose changes
Trevor: Will the liaisons be done with the PR? Who is going to take care about maintenance?
Wilco: Ideally that would be the same person. Rule authors should do this work. If not, one of us may need to do it.
Trevor: I am fine creating PRs but I don't want to be in control of that rule being back through the whole process.
Wilco: Would that matter for smaller changes or only for maojr work?
Trevor: For smaller changes it might be easier, if it is more significant than that, it may be an issue
Kathy: When there are changes, does it go to step one?
Wilco: It does, but I really hope there won't be substantial problems with rules at that stage. That would mean all of us would have missed the issues.
Shadi: This is why attention needs to be paid in the call for review process
... You are doing the same reviews, you are doing them only earlier in the process
Trevor: We could get stuck in a loop of liaisons with lots of work to do
Shadi: Ideally we would have the rule author going through the process. This would only happen if the author is not involved and if we missed the issues in the prior stages
Wilco: Not sure if authors will be attending these meetings. If we put it in our policy, that is going to require a lot of organizing
... I would be in favor of creating an issue and parking the rule if there are serious problems with it at this stage
Trevor: Some of this will become more clear as we work on these things practically
Kathy: Is there a timeframe for a successful implementation? If there are none, what happens to the rules?
Wilco: There is no timeframe now. Should there be?
Kathy: It depends on the reason for no implementations. It might be difficult to implement or just that anybody has gotten to it yet
Wilco: Wilco: Good reason, worth making a note of this.
... Last step would be to ask AGWG for publication.
... Sounds like this is good. I will try to wrap this up on Monday to share this with both groups, next Thursday we have a meeting scheduled with the CG
... I also expect to have results from the "state" group