CF discussions and decisions are mostly made on GitHub. No registration with CF is required to contribute; all that is needed is a freely available GitHub account.
In CF GitHub organization Discussions you can ask a question about how to use CF, comment on any aspect of CF or make a suggestion how CF could be changed or improved, contribute to any of the ongoing discussions, and read the previous ones. Announcements about CF are made there as well.
To keep up-to-date with announcements and discussions, go to the discuss repository and enable notifications from the Watch drop-down menu.
Discussions by category: ❓ Questions and answers about using CF 💬 Comments and ideas for changing CF 📣 Announcements relevant to CF
Proposals to change CF are made, debated and decided as GitHub issues in three repositories:
Vocabulary issues, in the vocabularies repository, for proposing additions or amendments to standard names, their definitions, or other CF controlled vocabulary (area types and standardized regions). Open a new issue. See also closed vocabulary issues.
As well as in GitHub issues, the status of proposals about standard names is shown by the CEDA vocabulary editor. To see a list of resolved proposals (accepted or rejected) for standard names from March 2011 onwards, click “Inactive” in the CEDA vocabulary editor.
Conventions issues, in the conventions repository, for proposing enhancements and reporting defects in the CF conventions. Open a new issue. See also closed conventions issues, classified by reason for closure: change agreed • agreement not to change • dormant. “Dormant” means the discussion on a proposed change did not reach a conclusion. Dormant issues may be reopened if there is a new impetus or ideas that might help bring about an agreement.
Website and governance issues, in the website repository, for proposing changes and reporting defects in the CF website or CF governance. Open a new issue.
You can enable notifications of updates to issues for each kind of issue separately using the Watch menu in its repository.
Announcements were made, questions asked and discussions took place in GitHub issues in the discuss repository from December 2019 until March 2024, when CF GitHub Discussions began.
General discussion took place and standard names were proposed on the cf-metadata mailing list (original at NCAR) until December 2019, when these functions migrated to GitHub discuss issues.
Changes to the conventions were proposed on the CF Metadata Trac site from October 2006 until July 2018, when these functions migrated to GitHub conventions issues. Before October 2006, when CF Metadata Trac was introduced, changes to the conventions were proposed on the cf-metadata mailing list.
CF Metadata