Update requests have less strict requirements than transition requests. One side effect of this appears to be that Working Groups do not need to address issues raised in wide review in order to continue to make update requests and publish additional Candidate Recommendation Snapshots. For an increasing number of groups, Candidate Recommendation Snapshot is the final maturity level, and so this would (inadvertently, I assume) mean that a Working Group can finalize and continue to update specifications indefinitely without ever addressing issues raised in wide review. That would be a poor outcome for ensuring that W3C specifications reflect wide review and horizontal review.

As a practical matter, we would expect that the Team would use its discretionary approval to make sure that lingering issues are addressed, but the Process currently provides no guidance about that.

We should update the Process to indicate that issues must be addressed, even for groups using Candidate Recommendation Snapshots: either by formally requiring that for some Snapshot publication (maybe the current or next one), or for giving substantive guidance to the Team that they should evaluate open issues when determining whether to approve update requests.