> Speaking of prior art: Python has PEPs and Java has JSRs. How do these
> systems handle that kind of thing?

The PEP process is defined in PEP 1. They have a big collection of
fields that a document can have:
<https://www.python.org/dev/peps/pep-0001/#pep-header-preamble>.

Status: <Draft | Active | Accepted | Provisional | Deferred | Rejected |
            Withdrawn | Final | Superseded>
Type: <Standards Track | Informational | Process>
Requires: <pep numbers>
Replaces: <pep number>
Superseded-By: <pep number>

It looks similar to internet RFCs (and similarly complex :)

Or did you mean how these processes handle evolving registries of
things? I don't know about that.