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Mark the experimental property as deprecated#28811

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caugner merged 4 commits intomdn:mainfrom
ddbeck:deprecate-experimental
Jan 30, 2026
Merged

Mark the experimental property as deprecated#28811
caugner merged 4 commits intomdn:mainfrom
ddbeck:deprecate-experimental

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@ddbeck
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@ddbeck ddbeck commented Jan 13, 2026

Summary

Consumers of BCD probably shouldn't use the experimental field.

Test results and supporting details

In the October 21, 2025 BCD meeting, I suggested this as a possibility. I'm finally getting around to it!

Related issues

n/a

@ddbeck ddbeck requested a review from a team as a code owner January 13, 2026 17:24
@github-actions github-actions bot added schema Isses or pull requests regarding the JSON schema files used in this project. docs Issues or pull requests regarding the documentation of this project. size:xs [PR only] 0-6 LoC changed labels Jan 13, 2026
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github-actions bot commented Jan 13, 2026

Tip: Review these changes grouped by change (recommended for most PRs), or grouped by feature (for large PRs).


- `experimental`: a `boolean` value.

**Warning**: The `experimental` property is deprecated. Prefer using more well-defined stability calculations, such as Baseline, instead.
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Suggested change
**Warning**: The `experimental` property is deprecated. Prefer using more well-defined stability calculations, such as Baseline, instead.
> [!WARNING]
> The `experimental` property is **deprecated**.
> Prefer using better defined stability calculations, such as Baseline, instead.

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Unfortunately, this won't work. GitHub's (non-standard, unspecified 🙄) admonitions don't work in a list. They only render if the > is at column 1.

ddbeck and others added 2 commits January 13, 2026 18:55
Co-authored-by: Claas Augner <495429+caugner@users.noreply.github.com>
Co-authored-by: Claas Augner <495429+caugner@users.noreply.github.com>
@github-actions github-actions bot added size:s [PR only] 7-24 LoC changed and removed size:xs [PR only] 0-6 LoC changed labels Jan 13, 2026
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I'm excited for this!

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caugner commented Jan 14, 2026

Consumers of BCD probably shouldn't use the experimental field.

BCD tables on MDN show an icon for experimental features. We could instead show a Baseline icon, but we would probably have to compute it directly from each BCD feature, without taking into consideration web-features.

I would propose to add this computed Baseline status per BCD feature into the published BCD data, and to do this at the same time of deprecating experimental.

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We should wait with the deprecation until we provide a per-feature replacement of the experimental status, see my previous comment.

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ddbeck commented Jan 15, 2026

I don't think we should wait. This advice would be to new consumers of BCD: they should not use experimental for any purpose. But existing consumers of BCD may (at least until there's a plan to remove experimental).

@ddbeck ddbeck added the meeting agenda Issues or pull requests in need of discussion in a project meeting. label Jan 19, 2026
@ddbeck ddbeck added semver-minor-bump A change that adds a new, non-potentially-breaking feature for consumers and removed meeting agenda Issues or pull requests in need of discussion in a project meeting. labels Jan 20, 2026
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ddbeck commented Jan 20, 2026

We had a lengthy discussion about this on today's BCD call, which prompted me to revise this PR. Some highlights from that discussion:

  • I explained a bit more about why I want to see this deprecation notice appear. My motivation here is to discourage new uses for the experimental data by new consumers of BCD. I do not intend to disrupt MDN or other existing consumers' use of experimental (unless and until they switch to alternatives).
  • I think @pepelsbey suggested that I confirm with Ruth that MDN content is fine with this, the next time I see her. Since there is no plan to remove this as yet, I don't expect any problems with declaring this deprecated.
  • We had a lengthy conversation—one might say "debate"—about the meaning of the experimental field. I've revised the PR to make it more clear that the experimental field has a murky history from MDN's days as a wiki and an evolving meaning. This prompted the revisions to the PR.
  • @Elchi3 pointed out that declaring the deprecation would also get us new information, feedback from consumers, by announcing the deprecation.

I've revised the PR to make it more clear in the documentation that experimental's meaning has been loose over its history.

I'll also add here that if we merge this PR, the following release should be semver minor and there should be a notice in the release notes about the change wrought by this PR.

@ddbeck ddbeck requested a review from caugner January 20, 2026 15:31
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Rumyra commented Jan 29, 2026

From an MDN perspective marking it deprecated won't affect us, as long as we can keep using it (and adding it to bcd) until we can replace the labelling on our pages.

We do want to do this, however I think it will be a bit of a timely journey - I need to to do a full review but currently a rough timeline looks something like

  • Deal with 'deprecated' first, alongside the addition of 'not recommended' baseline (this gives us a good understanding of what is entailed in removing current labelling)
  • Prototype icon replacement (sidebars, compat tables) as these are also affected
  • Assess and make a plan for experimental

@caugner caugner merged commit 8cc5111 into mdn:main Jan 30, 2026
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@github-project-automation github-project-automation bot moved this from Todo to Done in BCD meeting agenda Jan 30, 2026
@caugner caugner mentioned this pull request Jan 30, 2026
@ddbeck ddbeck deleted the deprecate-experimental branch March 2, 2026 16:58
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