Jonathan,
I think the change you propose makes a lot of sense, and strikes just the right balance.
- Jeff
________________________________________
From: CF-metadata [cf-metadata-bounces at cgd.ucar.edu] on behalf of Jonathan Gregory [j.m.gregory at reading.ac.uk]
Sent: Thursday, March 13, 2014 10:23 AM
To: cf-metadata at cgd.ucar.edu
Subject: Re: [CF-metadata] Editing/publishing workflow
Dear Jeff
> Present CF Conventions policies require that all changes be
> provisional, and marked as such in the document, until determined to
> be permanent at a later time (this determination has never been
> made).
> That's the meaning of all the pink and yellow highlighting in the
> document at cf-pcmdi.llnl.gov.
Yes, this is a issue. As Richard said, it doesn't matter how it is marked. The
problem is that all changes, however old, are still marked as provisional, as
you said. This is (a) a bit silly and (b) a nuisance as regards legibility
of the doc. The aim of provisional status was to allow time for people to try
out the change, in case a logical flaw was discovered which hadn't been fore-
seen at the time of the proposal. This was because of the concern that many or
most proposals concern data which has not yet been written, so the metadata
being proposed can't have been thoroughly tested. It was supposed that some
tests, using specified software, would be used to demonstrate the new feature
was "working", but no-one had time to work out the details for this.
I'd like to propose changing the rules. That's something the conventions
committee can agree, I believe. I would suggest the simplest possibility, if
we wish to retain provisional status, is to specify a time. We could say that,
after one year from acceptance or when the next version of the conventions
document is published, whichever is later, a change becomes permanent. What
do you think?
Cheers
Jonathan
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Received on Thu Mar 13 2014 - 17:52:12 GMT
