Ocean-Atlas Governance

Ocean-Atlas Governance

1. Purpose

This document defines the governance model for knowledge managed by Ocean-Atlas.

It establishes common rules for:

knowledge lifecycle;
ownership and maintenance;
contribution;
review and approval;
modification;
deprecation and supersession;
archival.

The objective is to keep Ocean-Atlas trustworthy, current, traceable, and maintainable as both the knowledge base and contributor community grow.

2. Governance Principles

Ocean-Atlas governance follows these principles:

Every knowledge item has clear ownership.
Changes to authoritative knowledge are reviewable and traceable.
Lifecycle status is explicit.
Historical decisions and superseded knowledge are preserved when they remain relevant.
Canonical knowledge must not be silently replaced or contradicted.
Governance should be proportional to the significance of the knowledge.
Automation may enforce governance rules, but the governance model must remain independent of specific tools or platforms.

3. Knowledge Lifecycle

The general lifecycle is:

Draft → Review → Accepted/Approved
                     │
                     ├── Deprecated
                     │
                     ├── Superseded
                     │
                     └── Archived

Not every knowledge type uses every state.

Draft

The knowledge item is being created or substantially revised.

Draft content:

may be incomplete;
may change without compatibility guarantees;
must not be treated as authoritative current knowledge.

Review

The item is considered ready for evaluation.

Review should verify:

correctness;
completeness appropriate to purpose;
consistency with existing authoritative knowledge;
metadata and identity compliance;
terminology;
relationships and references;
version applicability where relevant.

Accepted / Approved

The knowledge has completed the required review and is considered valid for its intended purpose.

Accepted is generally appropriate for decisions, architecture, proposals, and standards.

Approved may be used for maintained operational or reference content where formal acceptance semantics are unnecessary.

The exact allowed statuses may vary by knowledge type.

Deprecated

The knowledge remains available but should no longer be used for new work.

Deprecated knowledge should identify:

why it was deprecated;
when applicable, the recommended replacement;
migration guidance where necessary.

Superseded

The knowledge has been replaced by newer authoritative knowledge.

A superseded item must reference its replacement using a stable relationship.

Archived

The item is retained primarily for historical or traceability purposes and is no longer part of active knowledge.

Archived content should remain discoverable when historical context is requested but should not normally rank as current guidance.

4. Type-Specific Lifecycle

Knowledge types may define specialized lifecycle states.

Examples:

Architecture:
Draft → Review → Accepted → Superseded / Archived

ADR:
Draft → Review → Accepted / Rejected → Superseded

RFC:
Draft → Review → Accepted / Rejected / Withdrawn → Superseded

Reference:
Draft → Review → Approved → Deprecated / Archived

Guide:
Draft → Review → Approved → Deprecated / Archived

Lifecycle rules must be defined consistently and must not introduce arbitrary status values per document.

The metadata schema defines the controlled status vocabulary.

5. Ownership and Maintenance

Every independently addressable knowledge item must have an owner.

The owner is accountable for the correctness and lifecycle of the knowledge.

Where useful, one or more maintainers may be identified.

Maintainers are responsible for activities such as:

keeping content current;
responding to proposed changes;
coordinating reviews;
correcting outdated information.

Ownership may belong to:

an Ocean project;
a team;
a functional area;
an explicitly identified responsible party.

Ownership should prefer stable organizational responsibility over temporary individual responsibility where practical.

6. Contributions

Contributors may:

create new knowledge;
improve existing knowledge;
correct errors;
propose lifecycle changes;
add or improve relationships;
update examples and supporting artifacts.

Contributions must follow:

the Knowledge Architecture;
Metadata Schema;
Identity and Relationship Standards;
Content Standards;
applicable knowledge templates.

A contribution should not duplicate existing canonical knowledge when the existing item can be updated or referenced instead.

7. Review

Review depth should be proportional to the significance of the change.

Minor changes may require lightweight review.

Examples:

spelling corrections;
formatting improvements;
non-semantic link corrections.

Significant changes require appropriate subject-matter review.

Examples:

DSL semantics;
architecture;
normative reference behavior;
accepted decisions;
compatibility or migration guidance;
lifecycle changes.

Reviewers should evaluate both the content and its consistency with related authoritative knowledge.

8. Approval and Acceptance

Knowledge should only move to Accepted or Approved when:

required content is sufficiently complete;
metadata is valid;
stable identity is assigned;
relevant relationships are established;
required review is complete;
known contradictions with authoritative knowledge are resolved or explicitly documented.

Approval or acceptance must be traceable through repository history, review records, metadata, or another governed mechanism.

The exact approval mechanism may evolve independently of the knowledge model.

9. Updating Existing Knowledge

Current knowledge should be updated when:

behavior changes;
errors are discovered;
terminology changes;
additional clarification is needed;
version applicability changes.

Minor improvements do not require a new stable ID.

A new stable ID should only be introduced when the identity of the knowledge itself changes according to the Identity and Relationship Standards.

Significant semantic changes should preserve enough history to understand how the knowledge evolved.

10. Deprecation

Knowledge should be deprecated when it remains relevant for existing users or versions but should no longer guide new work.

Deprecated items should include, where applicable:

deprecation reason;
deprecation date;
affected versions;
replacement knowledge;
migration guidance.

Search, navigation, RAG, and AI consumers should prefer current authoritative knowledge over deprecated knowledge unless historical or version-specific information is requested.

11. Supersession

Supersession is used when one knowledge item is replaced by another.

Example:

architecture.package-resolution-v2
    --supersedes-->
architecture.package-resolution-v1

The previous item becomes Superseded.

Superseded knowledge must not be deleted merely because a replacement exists.

Maintaining the relationship preserves:

historical context;
decision traceability;
version-aware retrieval;
migration understanding.

12. Archival and Deletion

Archival is preferred over deletion when knowledge has historical, architectural, decision, or traceability value.

Deletion is appropriate primarily when:

content was created accidentally;
content contains no lasting knowledge value;
content duplicates another item without meaningful history;
legal, security, or governance requirements require removal.

Stable IDs of published knowledge must never be reused after deletion.

13. Conflicting Knowledge

When two knowledge items conflict, the conflict must not be resolved merely by choosing the newest file.

Consumers should consider:

lifecycle status;
authority level;
canonicality;
version applicability;
explicit supersession relationships;
relevant accepted decisions.

Known contradictions between authoritative items should be corrected or explicitly documented.

Ocean-Atlas should eventually support automated detection of common forms of conflicting or stale knowledge.

14. Contribution Workflow

The general workflow is:

Create or Modify
      ↓
Validate
      ↓
Review
      ↓
Revise if required
      ↓
Accept / Approve
      ↓
Maintain
      ↓
Deprecate / Supersede / Archive when necessary

Validation may initially be manual.

As Ocean-Atlas evolves, automated validation should check metadata, identities, relationships, links, templates, and other enforceable standards.

15. Governance of Standards

Changes to foundational Ocean-Atlas standards require stronger review than ordinary content changes.

This includes:

Knowledge Architecture;
Metadata Schema;
Identity and Relationship Standards;
Content Standards;
Governance;
controlled vocabularies;
knowledge type definitions.

Significant changes should preserve backward compatibility where practical.

Breaking changes to the knowledge model should include an explicit migration strategy.

16. Technology Independence

Governance must remain independent of any specific:

Git hosting platform;
review system;
documentation framework;
CI/CD implementation;
search technology;
database;
AI or RAG platform.

Git-based pull requests may initially implement the workflow, but the governance semantics belong to Ocean-Atlas itself.

17. Summary

Ocean-Atlas governance ensures that knowledge has:

stable ownership;
explicit lifecycle state;
appropriate review;
traceable approval;
controlled evolution;
preserved history;
clear deprecation and supersession.

The governance model should remain lightweight enough to encourage contribution while rigorous enough to keep Ocean-Atlas a trustworthy source of knowledge.