Re: Issues around sponsoring individual documents

[Dave Crocker <[e-mail]>]

Martin Duerst wrote:
> At 22:42 07/09/07, tom.petch wrote:
>> 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 think this is a valid point. The IETF discourages leaving any potentially
> instable pointers in documents, and this includes pointers to mailing

Well, not really.  Internet Drafts frequently state where to go for online 
discussion.  Certainly all the drafts I've been involved in in recent years do 
this.  And there is an established method of marking text that is to be 
removed prior to RFC publication.

There was a suggestion to mandate having all Internet Drafts contain an email 
address for discussion, but it was not pursued. As I recall, the fact that the 
information can be ferreted out, for working group drafts, was the reason for 
not requiring it to be listed in every I-D.

My own view is that the entire purpose of an I-D is for discussion, so the 
address ought to be mandated, to make sure that the problem you cite does not 
occur.  It is easy information to provide and it saves potential contributors 
quite a bit of frustration.


> As for the Atom-related drafts that James was working on,
> I think that's one situation where I could understand if the AD
> just told the author and the WG: Please make this a WG draft.

It is common for "related" drafts to be outside the scope of the wg charter. 
The AD cannot simply instruct the wg to go beyond that scope.  So it is not 
uncommon for an informal wg task to be pursued formally as an individual 
submission.


> if I were an AD, I'd definitely think about trying to reduce
> my workload by having a WG chair do the shephearding ex officio,
> rather than politely asking him/her and being declined.

Yup.


> Creating a WG is a huge overhead, but having a WG being
> formally responsible for a draft that they discuss anyway
> isn't too much overhead. Just an idea.

Given the need to modify the charter, it actually is very high overhead.

d/

-- 

   Dave Crocker
   Brandenburg InternetWorking
   bbiw.net