First stab at documenting the art of defining semantic conventions

[lmolkova]

A lot of todos, which I'd like to tackle in follow up PRs (hopefully with the help of others)

Merge requirement checklist

• CONTRIBUTING.md guidelines followed.
• Change log entry added, according to the guidelines in When to add a changelog entry.
  • If your PR does not need a change log, start the PR title with [chore]
• schema-next.yaml updated with changes to existing conventions.

[Copilot]

Copilot reviewed 2 out of 2 changed files in this pull request and generated 1 comment.

Comments suppressed due to low confidence (1)

docs/general/how-to-define-semantic-conventions.md:69

• The phrase 'are involved into instrumentation efforts' should be 'are involved in instrumentation efforts'.

are involved into instrumentation efforts, and are committed to be the point of contact for

[joaopgrassi]

This is a great start!

[braydonk]

Minor grammar feedback

[trisch-me]

While I’m not opposed to this PR and appreciate the idea of having a clear path for defining semantic conventions, I would like to raise a concern about donation of ECS into Otel, where we still have a significant number of new namespaces / new fields to be added to the Otel and this could potentially slow down the merger. Should we consider establishing a short-circuit path to streamline the donation process?

[lmolkova]

@trisch-me This PR outlines path to success and best practices. Most of the language used there is non-normative.
And it's something we already practice when reviewing changes - we already ask to define conventions for signals along with the attributes.