Improve the Proposal Template

[dan-odsc]

Doc: https://docs.google.com/document/d/1Yc5D8RxeVF73nlkudSR3Hawg6prZAf2OTVOUrTQDnBY/edit#heading=h.kpn5fmmsrxfx

Suggestions from Devin:

• Define at the top what a Proposal's scope should be. Do we want someone to list all their changes in a single proposal. do you want a proposal filled out for each individual issue/change or something in between?
• Include a link to an example that's filled out well
• Consider adding these terms into the flowchart - https://docs.google.com/document/d/1rU30D4UJEW-pvdXZMu_z9mTld6Yx3x5yjIrnTH2XX7I/edit?disco=AAABK9KGi1M

[mrshll1001]

Couldn't find the original forum post with Devin's suggestions, so putting reckons in here:

In short, this is much appreciated and helpful. We'll write a bit about making well-scoped proposals at the top of the template and after 3.1 we'll hopefully have some decent examples of proposals. Perhaps we can create a page somewhere on either the HSDS Docs or the OR site to list all the succesful proposals, so that there's always a recent example to hand?

Proposal scope is interesting. The answer to the question about what a proposal's scope should be is sadly a bit of a tautology; I think that we're going to see (and should see) proposals of different scopes. Long-term, I think it's the role of the technical committee to keep these proposals in scope through means of working with the proposal authors in producing the proposal, as well as rejecting proposals that try to do too much.

FWIW, if we think in software development terms I would see proposals as equivalent as a feature branch on a repo. They put forth some desired changes which are all necessary for implementing a particular feature of the standard; related fields, maybe some new structures etc. I would not expect them to have a strict 1-to-1 mapping to existing Issues on Github, but instead to cite issues (among other things) as evidence for the need of the proposed change(s). Similar to pull requests, we wouldn't want to accept a proposal that did too much or tried to change too much of the standard by itself; it's likely we'd work with the authors to try and break it up into piecemeal changes that the committee can better absorb and understand.

[dan-odsc]

Perhaps we can create a page somewhere on either the HSDS Docs or the OR site to list all the successful proposals, so that there's always a recent example to hand?

Yes, great idea.