Publishing Updated Placeholder Guidelines & Outcomes

[rachaelbradley]

Summary

We are nearing an possible publication point for the placeholder outcomes and updated placeholder guidelines. The group need to decide whether we want to:

• Make no public update (PR Only)
• Update only the editor's draft
• Update the editor's draft and working draft

No voting is needed here on GitHub but please add comments and thoughts. We will be discussing this at the 12 March 2024 meeting.

Background

If you are unfamiliar with our process for evolving content, please review the maturity labeling process before going further.

We published a Placeholder List of Guidelines in July 2023 and used that to guide the last 6 months of content work. We are nearing a next draft of placeholder Guidelines and a first draft of placeholder Outcomes.

The group need to decide whether we want to:

• Make no public update and keep the new draft in a PR
• Update only the editor's draft
• Update the editor's draft and working draft

Factors in our Decision

• W3C requests a regular cadence of publication, twice a year is our current goal. We are approaching a year since our last publication.
• When we make updates, the accessibility and tech community reacts. We are at a placeholder level so things will change a Lot from here. While we would add a lot of framing around the maturity of the content to manage expectations, there will still be a reaction to the publication.
• Publishing would allow us to get early feedback including requesting help identifying research, gaps in the list of outcomes, and errors in our thinking. This often saves time down the road.

[gundulaniemann]

Prior to making a decision, I would like to see the document, yet I do not find a link to it here.
The link to the maturity labeling process
gives me an error message.

[rachaelbradley]

Please retry the link. The full document will come to the working group for review and a final approval to publish. This is intended as an initial conversation to discuss options, pros and cons, and figure out an initial direction.

[bruce-usab]

We are at a placeholder level so things will change a Lot from here.
...
W3C requests a regular cadence of publication, twice a year is our current goal. We are approaching a year since our last publication.

These two data points I find persuasive for updating at least the Editor's Draft. It also suggests we might reconsider the cadence of our publication goals. For example, the Working Draft might be on a yearly cadence and the Editor Draft more frequently.

[alastc]

(Chair hat off) We have already published a set of placeholder guidelines as part of the working draft, so I don't see any harm in updating those. It will show a wider range of outcomes being considered, and hopefully the default categories for the outcomes.

We will need to frame this update appropriately, i.e. Not all of these outcomes will be included by the time we get to publication, some may be added, and all of them will be renamed and refined. Our process for this is...

If people don't wish to publish, I'd be interested to know what we should be doing instead, or what the concerns are?

[rachaelbradley]

(Chair hat off) I wonder if a partial approach would make sense. Something like we publish the entire list to the editor's draft and publish the author centered outcomes that are well supported by research or agreed upon as foundational to the working draft with a link back to the full list for those who are interested.