What is the CR Review Period?

[gsnedders]

https://www.w3.org/Consortium/Process/Drafts/#transition-pr says:

must show that all issues raised during the Candidate Recommendation review period have been formally addressed

However, I can't find a formal definition of what the CR review period actually is. Following the CR cross-reference tells me CR "[signals] to the wider community that it is time to do a final review", but nothing actually defines a period.

We know from the fact that a CR was published (presumably meaning a CR Snapshot) that the document has received wide review, so we can't be referring to that, but we must instead be referring the "final review".

We should be clear in the PR transition criteria what review we're referring to. If we want to define a CR final review period, we should define that term and cross-reference it from the PR transition criteria.

[caribouW3]

Hi Sam,
Good point!
I've always seen CR as more specific about review from implementation experience rather than features, as said in the second point of the definition at https://www.w3.org/Consortium/Process/Drafts/#RecsCR:

• gather implementation experience

What bothers me currently is the lack of incentive for WGs to actually declare it done and move to PR. An awful lot of specs stay in CR forever, even with the ability to amend Recommendations later. I'd be inclined to support a proposal against stagnation in CR, since that is not longer a "review".
I'd also note that automatic publishing tends to give the impression that something is moving even when it's really not progressing, which is confusing people outside WGs even more.

[plehegar]

We also have in Transitioning to Proposed Recommendation
[[

• must not have made any substantive changes to the document since the most recent Candidate Recommendation Snapshot, other than dropping features identified at risk.
  ]]

As such, the "final review" is the review of the latest substantive changes since the last CR Snapshot publication. And each publication of a Snapshot triggers a new review period. So, the "review period while in CR" is one or more review periods depending on the number of CR Snapshot published. I concur that the wording could be improved a bit, something along:
[[
must show that all issues raised during the review period(s) while in Candidate Recommendation maturity stage have been formally addressed
]]

[dwsinger]

The charter and process define the exit criteria, I think; typically interoperable implementations of each feature, test suites (and passing them) and so on. Sometimes, indeed, we wait a long while for those to happen.

[frivoal]

In https://www.w3.org/2021/Process-20211102/#transition-cr, we have

To publish a Candidate Recommendation, in addition to meeting the requirements for advancement a Working Group:
[…]

• must specify the deadline for comments, which must be at least 28 days after publication, and should be longer for complex documents

I am pretty sure this is what it's talking about. Establishing a term and cross linking does sound like a good idea.

[css-meeting-bot]

The Revising W3C Process CG just discussed What is the CR Review Period.

The full IRC log of that discussion

<fantasai> subtopic: What is the CR Review Period
<fantasai> github: https://github.com//issues/637
<fantasai> florian: Required to address issues that were raised during CR Review Period
<fantasai> florian: question is, what is the CR Review Period?
<plh> q+
<fantasai> florian: is it the full period of the CR stage? or is it the period prior to the review deadline in the SOTD?
<fantasai> florian: in which case you MUST address comment in that period, but MAY address comment afterwards
<fantasai> s/florian:/.../
<fantasai> ... which gets awkward if you leave a draft in CR for 3 years
<fantasai> plh: In practice, the Director isn't letting people ignore comments during the CR period
<fantasai> ... even for comments in PR, the Director wants the addressed
<fantasai> plh: review period, we prefer people to not send comments right at the time of the transition request, that's very frustrating to WG
<fantasai> ... so we want to increase pressure on commenter to send comments sooner than later
<fantasai> florian: We want to incentivize ppl to file early, but late comments should still be looked at
<fantasai> ... So the fact that there is an explicit window, maybe useful
<fantasai> ... but maybe for this sentence we remove "review" and call it the "CR Period"?
<fantasai> florian: all must be addressed isn't all must be fixed, but formally addressing means responding
<fantasai> ... WG can decide appropriate thing to do is nothing
<fantasai> plh: We have 2 sentences about this
<fantasai> ... one is about them all being formally addressed if in the review period
<plh> [[
<plh> must show that all issues raised during the Candidate Recommendation review period have been formally addressed,
<plh> must identify any substantive issues raised since the close of the Candidate Recommendation review period,
<plh> ]]
<fantasai> ... then second one is about must identify any issues that were raised afterwards
<fantasai> ... and these issues go to gether
<fantasai> florian: So that means, it does mean this predefined period
<fantasai> ... and you're required to address those comments, and you have to at least list, if not address, the ones afterwards
<fantasai> florian: Maybe we just cross-link things and make it clear, but don't change
<fantasai> plh: yes. And we do know in practice, if you have comments that are late that show something is broken, we won't allow the WG to move forward
<fantasai> florian: OK, so suggestion is clarify and move on
<fantasai> ACTION: florian clarify as above
<fantasai> plh: Make a PR, and we'll come back to it

[css-meeting-bot]

The Revising W3C Process CG just discussed Clarify CR review period, and agreed to the following:

• RESOLVED: Merge PR #691

The full IRC log of that discussion

<fantasai> Subtopic: Clarify CR review period
<fantasai> github: https://github.com//pull/691
<fantasai> github: https://github.com//issues/637
<fantasai> florian: We have some references to the "candidate recommendation review period"
<fantasai> ... and it was not clear what this meant
<fantasai> ... was it the entire time the spec is in CR, or was it the dedicated review period that is mentioned in the SOTD
<fantasai> ... We previously concluded it's that specific reserved time period
<fantasai> ... so the PR adds a definition there, and then cross-links to it
<fantasai> ... so I think this is an uneventful PR based on discussion last time
<fantasai> +1 to merging
<fantasai> plh: Any objections to merge?
<fantasai> RESOLVED: Merge PR #691