Initiating ENs

[msdemlei]

The current text is not very clear as to how to initiate the EN process, and it can be read that a future EN should first be published as a Note. In practice, this would have been clumsy, and thus, most ENs started their life as a PEN; I think we should make clear that this is legal, with or without a following RFC.

[pdowler]

I am a little wary here because I have heard people casually say "let's write an endorsed note" which I find philosophically wrong for several reasons. The main one is that the author(s) write a note and someone else (TCG) endorses it so conciously starting at PEN seems kind of wrong in principle (even if it is what happens in practice).

The second reason I don't like hearing that is that it seems to sound like it is motivated by "this will be easier/faster than a creating/updating a standard and the RFC process" rather than by EN being more appropriate than a standard. I would not want to encourage/sanction that and would rather solve the real problem: WD->PR->REC is too painful.

So, I just think we should be cautious about how we explain the EN process.

[msdemlei]

On Mon, May 12, 2025 at 08:46:43PM +0000, Patrick Dowler wrote: pdowler left a comment (ivoa-std/DocStd#1) So, I just think we should be cautious about how we explain the EN process.

Frankly, I've increasingly viewed ENs as "RECs that don't quite fit our REC model". The versioning policies need to be normative, but what WG would it belong to? The DDC note... well, describes a practice, which isn't quite what we do RECs for, but it's still stuff that people need to be able to rely on. The UCDs... well, they shouldn't be an EN, true. The UDF catalogue... could be a DAL REC just as well; I don't quite remember why we decided to go EN with it. The UAT-vocabulary note... could be a Semantics REC, but VocInVO2 sees ENs here. In the end, if you do an RFC, an EN is quite as much work as a REC is, at least to the editors (the TCG chair probably feels different here:-), and they haven't been faster either in consequence. So, I'd probably change the story on why we have ENs in the first place.

[mcdittmar]

So, I just think we should be cautious about how we explain the EN process.

I agree with Pat's examples of targeting EN seems rather wonky as well as trying to use it to bypass the REC process.. so a more clear definition of the Endorsed Note content would be a good idea. I've always considered it a place for "Official Policies and Procedures" level documents. The examples in the doc "This is the case for instance for the IVOA Architecture Documents or for implementation notes." covers this pretty well.

I also agree with Markus' list, that there are certain documents which we wanted to give 'higher exposure', but are probably not fitting in with the definition of EN. In general, I think vocabularies are sitting in a void space document-wise. While other RECS (Maintenance of UCD list) are probably better categorized as a Policy document.

As for the topic at hand: Initiating ENs

If you are thinking about these as implementation notes moving into higher visibility, then it makes sense for them to follow a path of Note(s) of various implementations.. one becomes the community favorite, which moves to EN status. This is an evolution over time. ( Has this ever happened? )

Others, perhaps related to setting up CAOM instances for example?, may be coming in from the outside already well established and the IVOA wants to acknowledge that as the preferred method right away.

The 'Entrance Criteria' paragraph includes both the initiation (who can propose an EN), and the criteria for being considered.

The ObsCore extensions might be a good example for hashing some of this out.

• there has been a lot of effort put into the notes
• they do/will include prototype implementations.. exercising the proposals

But:

• They are expecting to be transitional..
• Some content extracted into an ObsCore model update, others Vocabularies,
  • is there a provision for updating an EN whose content has migrated, or maybe the preferred pathways changed?
• Other content maybe implementation guides, which could remain at EN level.

Even the authors aren't sure if they are shooting for Note or Endorsed Note, and are looking to the TCG for guidance here.