MEMO-062: Week 9 Days 2-3 - Paragraph Structure Review Report

Date: 2025-11-15 Updated: 2025-11-15 Author: Platform Team Related: MEMO-052, MEMO-061

Executive Summary

Comprehensive paragraph structure review across all 5 massive-scale graph RFCs (RFC-057 through RFC-061). Overall assessment: ✅ A (Excellent). The RFCs demonstrate sophisticated technical writing with excellent paragraph structure, heavy use of tables and bullet lists, and minimal "wall of text" issues.

Key Metrics:

• 75-80% of paragraphs properly sized (1-5 sentences)
• Average paragraph length: 1.6-3.8 sentences (appropriate for technical docs)
• Zero prose "wall of text" blocks (only numbered question lists in "Open Questions")

One high-priority edit identified: RFC-060 Abstract - break long compound sentence into bulleted list for improved scannability.

Overall Assessment

Finding: ✅ Excellent paragraph structure across all 5 RFCs

The RFCs demonstrate strong technical writing with:

• Appropriate use of short paragraphs for clarity
• Tables and bullet lists to break up information
• Code examples with proper explanation
• Minimal "wall of text" issues

Key Metrics:

RFC	Avg Sentences/Para	Distribution	Grade
RFC-057	1.6	75% short (1-2), 15% good (3-5), 5% long (6-8), 5% wall-of-text (>8)	✅ A
RFC-058	2.2	56% short, 33% good, 6% long, 6% wall-of-text	✅ A
RFC-059	3.8	50% short, 25% good, 13% long, 13% wall-of-text	✅ A+ (best)
RFC-060	3.2	55% short, 27% good, 9% long, 9% wall-of-text	⚠️ A- (1 edit needed)
RFC-061	3.5	38% short, 38% good, 13% long, 13% wall-of-text	✅ A

Note: "Wall-of-text" paragraphs are all numbered question lists in "Open Questions" sections (intentional formatting, not prose issues).

Detailed Analysis by RFC

RFC-057: Massive-Scale Graph Sharding

Paragraph Quality: ✅ Excellent

Strengths:

• Heavy use of tables for numerical comparisons (very effective)
• Bullet lists for query patterns and use cases
• Short transitional paragraphs between sections
• Code examples well-isolated

Example of Good Structure (Motivation section, lines 42-55):

RFC-055 demonstrates 1B vertices across 10 proxies:

[Table with clear data]

**Why Scale Beyond 1B Vertices?**

This is perfect technical writing: statement → table → transition question.

Issues Found: None significant

RFC-058: Multi-Level Graph Indexing

Paragraph Quality: ✅ Excellent

Strengths:

• Clear four-tier hierarchy explained with consistent structure
• Good use of protobuf schemas to illustrate concepts
• Benchmark tables for performance comparison
• Short paragraphs transitioning between concepts

Issues Found: None significant

RFC-059: Hot/Cold Storage Tiers

Paragraph Quality: ✅ Excellent (best avg: 3.8 sentences)

Strengths:

• Balanced prose paragraphs (not too short, not too long)
• Cost analysis with clear tables
• Temperature state machine well-explained
• Good topic sentences

Example of Model Structure (Abstract, lines 26-36): 4-sentence paragraph with clear flow:

1. Topic: What this RFC defines
2. Problem: Why needed (cost at scale)
3. Solution: Hot/cold tiers
4. Impact: Cost savings + performance

This is model paragraph structure for technical abstracts.

Issues Found: None

RFC-060: Distributed Gremlin Execution

Paragraph Quality: ⚠️ Good (one minor improvement opportunity)

Strengths:

• Clear problem → solution structure
• Excellent use of examples throughout
• Query execution stages well-documented
• Good balance of prose and code

Issue Identified (Abstract, line 27):

Current (4 sentences, sentence 3 very long with multiple clauses):

This RFC defines a distributed Gremlin query execution engine for massive-scale graphs (100B vertices across 1000+ nodes). Standard Gremlin implementations execute queries on single machines, which is infeasible at this scale. This RFC presents a distributed query planner that decomposes Gremlin traversals into partition-local and cross-partition operations, optimizes execution plans using indexes (RFC-058), routes queries to appropriate storage tiers (RFC-059), and applies vertex-level authorization filters (RFC-061). The query executor supports the full Apache TinkerPop Gremlin specification while achieving sub-second latency for common traversals through intelligent partition pruning, parallel execution, and result streaming.

Recommended (break sentence 3 for clarity):

This RFC defines a distributed Gremlin query execution engine for massive-scale graphs (100B vertices across 1000+ nodes). Standard Gremlin implementations execute queries on single machines, which is infeasible at this scale.

This RFC presents a distributed query planner with four key capabilities:
- Decomposes Gremlin traversals into partition-local and cross-partition operations
- Optimizes execution plans using indexes (RFC-058)
- Routes queries to appropriate storage tiers (RFC-059)
- Applies vertex-level authorization filters (RFC-061)

The query executor supports the full Apache TinkerPop Gremlin specification while achieving sub-second latency for common traversals through intelligent partition pruning, parallel execution, and result streaming.

Rationale: Breaking the long compound sentence into a bulleted list improves scannability and makes the four capabilities immediately clear.

RFC-061: Graph Authorization

Paragraph Quality: ✅ Excellent (avg: 3.5 sentences)

Strengths:

• Use case examples very well-structured
• Code examples with clear "before/after" comparisons
• Good topic sentences throughout
• Performance tables effective

Example of Excellent Structure (Use Case 1, lines 81-104):

1. Scenario statement (1 sentence)
2. Setup (bullet list: tenants, vertices)
3. Query example (code block)
4. Results for two principals (clear comparison)

This demonstrates perfect "show, don't tell" technical writing.

Issues Found: None

Common Patterns Across All RFCs

What Works Well

1. Short Transitional Paragraphs (1-2 sentences between major concepts):

• Example: "Why Scale Beyond 1B Vertices?" (RFC-057)
• These guide the reader without bloat

2. Table + Explanation Pattern:

Paragraph introducing concept

[Table with data]

Paragraph explaining implications

This pattern appears ~30 times across RFCs and is always effective.

3. Code Example Sandwich:

Paragraph: "Here's how X works"

[Code block]

Paragraph: "This code does Y with result Z"

Clear before/after explanation of every code block.

4. Bullet Lists for Enumerations: Instead of "The system does A, B, C, and D" → use bullets. All RFCs do this consistently.

Anti-Patterns (Successfully Avoided)

✅ No "wall of text" prose blocks: The only >8 sentence "paragraphs" are numbered question lists in "Open Questions" sections (intentional formatting).

✅ No run-on sentences: Most sentences are 15-25 words (good length).

✅ No nested sub-clauses: Complex ideas are broken into bullet lists, not nested clauses.

Recommendations

High Priority: 1 Edit

RFC-060 Abstract (line 27): Break long compound sentence into bulleted list

Impact: Improves scannability of abstract

Status: To be implemented immediately

Medium Priority: Editorial Refinements

1. Add Summary Paragraphs at end of major sections:

• Example: After "Sharding Strategies" (RFC-057), add 2-sentence recap
• Pattern: "These four strategies offer different trade-offs. [Table summarizing when to use each]."

2. RFC-058: Add comparison table at end of "Four-Tier Index Hierarchy" section:

• Columns: Tier, Scope, Update Frequency, Query Usage
• Complements existing per-tier explanations

Low Priority: Optional

3. Enhanced Related RFCs Sections: Add 1-sentence description per RFC link:

• Current: - [RFC-057: Distributed Sharding](/rfc/rfc-057)
• Enhanced: - [RFC-057: Distributed Sharding](/rfc/rfc-057) - Hierarchical partition architecture

Validation Checklist

Criterion	Status	Notes
One idea per paragraph	✅ PASS	Clear topic focus
Topic sentences	✅ PASS	Present in prose paragraphs
3-5 sentence average	✅ PASS	Achieved in prose sections
No wall-of-text	✅ PASS	Only in question lists (OK)
Tables/lists used	✅ EXCELLENT	Heavy, appropriate use
Code sandwich pattern	✅ EXCELLENT	Consistent throughout

Examples of Model Paragraph Structure

Example 1: Problem-Solution (RFC-060, Motivation)

Pattern: Question → Current Approach → Problem → This RFC's Approach → Benefit

Why this works:

• Concrete example (not abstract)
• Clear problem statement
• Quantified improvement (2,500× speedup)

Example 2: Cost Analysis (RFC-059, Abstract)

Pattern: Scale → Cost → Solution → Savings

Structure:

1. At 100B scale, keeping all graph data in memory (210 TB) costs $126M/year.
2. Power-law access patterns mean only 10% of data is accessed frequently.
3. This RFC proposes hot/cold storage tiers with rapid S3 snapshot loading.
4. Result: 70% cost savings with acceptable query latency degradation.

Why this works:

• Each sentence = one concept
• Numbers quantify impact
• Clear conclusion sentence

Example 3: Technical Detail (RFC-058, Index Building)

Pattern: Challenge → Constraint → Solution → Performance

Structure:

• Challenge: Build indexes for 100B vertices without downtime.
• Constraint: Cannot block queries during index build (minutes to hours).
• Solution: Four-phase online index building with query-serving during construction.
• Performance: 11 minutes to build all indexes across 16,000 partitions in parallel.

Why this works:

• Bold labels for scannability
• One sentence per concept
• Ends with concrete metric

Next Steps

Immediate Action

1. Implement RFC-060 Abstract Edit:

• File: docs-cms/rfcs/rfc-060-distributed-gremlin-execution.md
• Line: 27
• Change: Break compound sentence into bulleted list
• Est. time: 5 minutes

Week 9 Day 4: Code Example Placement

Verify that every code example follows the "sandwich pattern":

1. Explanatory paragraph before code
2. Code block with language tag
3. "What it does" paragraph after code

Week 9 Day 5: Table and Diagram Review

Check all tables for:

• Clear headers
• Aligned columns
• Complement (not duplicate) surrounding text

Conclusion

Overall Grade: ✅ A (Excellent)

The RFCs demonstrate sophisticated technical writing with excellent paragraph structure. The heavy use of tables, bullet lists, and code examples (rather than long prose blocks) is exactly right for this type of technical documentation.

One high-priority edit identified (RFC-060 Abstract). All other paragraph structure is production-ready.

The writing style is:

• Clear: One idea per paragraph
• Scannable: Bullet lists, tables, bold labels
• Quantified: Metrics and examples throughout
• Consistent: Same patterns across all RFCs

Recommendation: Proceed with RFC-060 Abstract edit, then move to Week 9 Day 4 (Code Example Placement).

Revision History

• 2025-11-15: Initial paragraph structure review for Week 9 Days 2-3