Re: Issues around sponsoring individual documents

["tom.petch" <[e-mail]>]

Lisa

After perusing your e-mail, I am suffering from question overload.

I think that IS suffer from too little review and, as such, damage the IETF.

Sometimes, the first I am aware of them is when they are approved by the IESG;
sometimes, they come to my attention when a Last Call discussion on the main
IETF list highlights a deficiency which could have been fixed long before Last
Call; sometimes such a Last Call discussion refers back to an approved RFC which
now turns out to have a deficiency.  Of course, any of this can happen with any
I-D from any source but IS appear to contribute more than their share.

I have put time and effort into trying to find if and where these I-Ds get
discussed prior to Last Call and, apart from URI, have largely failed.  I do
receive and mostly look at each and every I-D announcement but do not always
realise from the title and description whether or not I whould be interested.

I often see posts which are concerned that the IESG have too much power, and in
general, I disagree, but this is one area where is seems that they do, severally
and collectively.

This is a general, cross-area, comment and should not be taken as specific to
the Apps area, or to you personally.

Tom Petch

----- Original Message -----
From: "Lisa Dusseault" <[e-mail]>
To: "Apps Discuss" <[e-mail]>
Sent: Friday, September 07, 2007 2:44 AM
Subject: Issues around sponsoring individual documents
>
> The Applications area does not have a lot of attendees or WGs (I
> oversee five, and of those five, three are within a document or two
> of closing).  Much of the current work is being done as individual
> submissions (abbreviated IS in this email) [0].  I'd like to get some
> input on how IS's should be handled.  I have many opinions on IS
> tradeoffs, having written several and sponsored more, but I'm trying
> to phrase these questions without entirely presupposing my own
> answers, and to reflect conflicted opinions and the criticisms I've
> heard.
>
> (BTW, I'm sure I can follow the advice of "Use your judgement" if
> anybody decides to say that, but it doesn't really inform that
> judgement does it?  )
>
> Is an IS that defines a new protocol for the Standards Track fine in
> general?
> Is an IS that extends a standard protocol developed in a WG fine in
> general?
> Is an IS that obsoletes a standard protocol developed in a WG fine in
> general?
>
> Do IS's suffer from less review?  Is that a problem?
> Whose responsibility is it to get sufficient review?
>
> Is it mostly well-connected individuals that can use the IS track,
> knowing an AD to do the sponsoring?  Or mostly individuals with a lot
> of time on their hands?
> An IS can have a non-AD document shepherd.  Does encouraging that
> improve the situation or make IS publishing even more dependent on
> the author's connections?
>
> Should I limit time spent sponsoring IS's? [1]  IESG work plus IS
> work could consume 30 hours a week, or 40, or 50...
>
> Assuming I limit the potentially endless amount of work devoted to
> IS's, do I limit it algorithmically (e.g. first come first served),
> as a matter of pure taste, or other?
> How should I prioritize IS sponsoring work? Which documents get my
> attention first?  [2]
>
> When there's a question of consensus for an IS document, should I
> just drop the document?
> Assuming I try to determine consensus how do I do so without an
> official owning WG -- consensus calls to the IETF discuss list?
> Choose a related list and hope people are paying attention?
> Do I need to ensure there's a quorum?
>
> How would appeals against IS documents affect answers to these
> issues? (Usually individual ADs take the first stab at handling
> appeals, formal or informal, against WG chair decisions.  When
> there's no WG chair involved with a doc, I guess the appeal would go
> straight to the whole IESG...)
> Does sponsoring many IS documents give an AD, and the IESG as a
> whole, too much power?
>
> Are we discouraging legitimate WGs by encouraging IS's?
> What other purposes do WG's serve besides simply publishing
> documents, that are not met by IS's? [3]
> If we turned down ISs in Apps, would the proposed work die, go
> elsewhere or ... ?  Would that be bad?
>
> Lisa
>
> [0] Note "Independent Submission" is a different thing, an I-D that
> goes through the RFC Editor to RFC and never gets an IETF last call,
> so it's marked as not an IETF document
>
> [1] So far I have been sponsoring nearly every document I'm asked to,
> not really limiting.  However I can see time limiting becoming required.
>
> [2] My current practice is to do WG-related work first, then IS-
> sponsoring work in rotation.  Note that with WG-related work, the WG
> chair does some work which I have to do with IS documents. IS
> documents are usually more work for me than WG products.
>
> [3] I'll take a first stab at this one:
>   - creating buy-in among potential implementors,
>   - developing relationships that can lead to more interop work than
> otherwise,
>   - choosing document editors that can reflect or build consensus,
> strongarm them if necessary
>
>
>
>
>
>
>