Re: [I18nrp] Additional input needed for i18nRP BOF

[Peter Saint-Andre <[e-mail]>]

On 6/6/18 4:56 PM, Adam Roach wrote:
> On 6/6/18 5:31 PM, Peter Saint-Andre wrote:
>> SECDIR, GENART, and ARTART reviewers seem to check the whole document.
>> By contrast, I18N reviews would have a smaller scope (along the lines of
>> what the SDPDIR does).
> 
> I'm not sure how good a comparison this is. Any document that doesn't
> mention SDP is clearly not a candidate for SDPDIR review. Any document
> that doesn't mention i18n, probably *does* need a check that such
> omission makes sense. In that way, I think the required task is more
> like SECDIR than SDPDIR.

As stated in BCP 18:

   Internationalization is for humans. This means that protocols are not
   subject to internationalization; text strings are.

If there are no human-readable text strings in a protocol, then no i18n
review is needed. In the IETF, that significantly narrows the field. My
sense is that few INT or RTG area specs, a somewhat higher proportion of
OPS, SEC, and TSV area specs, and a preponderance of ART area specs
would at least need a spot check to determine if review is required.

Furthermore, the IETF often publishes documents that re-use core
protocols. Examples just from the 2018-06-07 telechat tomorrow include
YANG data models, HTTP header fields and status codes, IMAP extensions,
and URN namespace registrations. One hopes that the i18n aspects of
these protocols were addressed long ago, and that these documents are
re-using i18n methods already in place.

And this is not to mention procedural documents about meeting policies,
IANA registry rules, and other things I see on tomorrow's agenda.

> Thanks for mentioning ARTART. Its process is useful as a third point on
> the continuum of rigor exhibited by directorates. ARTART only reviews
> those documents that are flagged as potentially having ART interactions,
> rather than the intended full coverage of SECDIR, OPSDIR, and GENART. It
> is probably more in line with what is appropriate for an
> internationalization directorate, both in function and size. It
> currently has 12 members, although we would ideally like a slightly
> larger pool.
> 
>> As a point of comparison, the W3C I18N WG [1] is
>> quite busy but is very small: John Klensin and I and a few others help
>> out, but most of the work is done by two people.
> 
> Taken together with the assumption that any IETF directorate would
> probably involve substantial overlap with that group of people, I'm now
> concerned about scaling. I couldn't quickly find statistics on how many
> documents the W3C finalizes in any given year, but my impression is that
> it's somewhat smaller than the IETF's output. 

Perhaps. However, many or most of the specs that the W3C develops are
human-facing, which is the relevant measure (see above).

You can get a sense for the range of review tasks here:

https://w3c.github.io/i18n-activity/reviews/

Also, the W3C team is engaged in a variety of more outward-facing
activities (articles, language-specific task forces, etc.):

https://w3c.github.io/i18n-activity/projects/

And they are working on their own documents, such as the Character Model
for the World Wide Web:

https://www.w3.org/TR/charmod-norm/

So it's hard to compare apples to apples. But overall I would say that
the W3C I18N WG is operating at high efficiency.

> Given that your
> description uses the words "quite busy," do you think that same group of
> individuals could double or triple their i18n review load without losing
> efficacy or burning out?

I can't say whether they'd ever have to double or triple their
activities, or how they'd handle that. The might reprioritize certain
tasks, review some things more slowly, seek more volunteers, etc. I can
ask them during tomorrow's I18N WG call.

Peter