Re: [Icar] Input based on SIRS experience

Adding my own thoughts to the archive, since the topic came up, and with the 
hope it can added to the discussion:

	It was not much effort to get a core of reviewers signed up.  

This suggests a good core of community motivation to help.  We have not needed 
more, so we do not know whether an effort like this can attract _enough_ 
qualified reviewers.

	I am not sure how to interpret the low number of review requests.  

It is easy to say that it is due to lack of community awareness or interest or 
trust in the SIRs effort.  Certainly we have not done as much marketing as we 
might have wished. However this is view is confounded by the very slow metabolic 
rate of the IETF and the fact that the effort began at the beginning of a 
summer.  

No doubt there probably are other factors.  Cliches like 'tipping point' and 
'crossing the chasm' were created for just this issue. For example, it may be 
that it is more difficult to change existing working group efforts than it is to 
get integrated in with new(er) ones. Certainly we have not done any serious, 
sustained effort to get working groups to request reviews. 

On doing the administrative side of this effort, there are some things that I 
suspect are strategic, besides the relatively obvious fact that this really does 
take some ongoing, administrative effort, more than I had expected.  (But, then, 
I always underestimate these things.)

	It needs to be easy to have a record of the review process for a document and, 
	by derivation, an ability to see the whole set of review efforts.  There should 
	be a central point for tracking review efforts and a central point for 
	accessing reviews.

Besides the obvious, local and tactical benefit to the individual working group, 
this permits the community to get the ability to review the _set _of reviews and 
get a sense of the effort and result of doing reviews.  In other words, it has 
marketing value.  It makes it easy for others to see that there is review 
activity and it makes it easy for them to evaluate the nature and quality of 
those reviews.  This will make them more comfortable getting reviews for their 
own efforts and will help them decide on what reviewers to ask for. Whether this 
needs to be a permanent, formal archive, like RFCs, an ephemeral, formal 
archive, like I-Ds, or an unofficial, ephemeral archive like a WG mailing list, 
has not been resolved.  

My own thought is that formal publication (RFC and even I-D) is far too much 
overhead.  The only existing mechanism is the mailing list. Creating a new 
mechanism strikes me as too much effort, and added effort is a very large 
barrier to adoption of this process.

Opening up the IETF Tracker to working group chairs, and adding the review 
construct and/or allowing free-form entries would help this enormously.  
(Free-form means that the IETF does not have to formally adopt the thing being 
tracked.  This means reviews -- and other activities -- could be tracked much 
sooner than would be possible if we first have to get IETF-wide approval of the 
review process.

	I am not sure whether selection of reviewers, by requesters,  needs to be 
	different than we set up.  

A web page with a list of bios, and a mailing list for sending requests to is 
probably fine.

	The public discussion about reviewing shows that the community is still working 
	on clarifying what types of reviews are needed, when, and how to use them.  

	There is also the small matter of the SIRS reviews that have been done.  

Have they been they type that are needed?  Should they be done differently?  We 
have not tried to assess this. Certainly we cannot expect regular, widespread 
use of a review process until working groups know what to ask for, or at least 
what to expect they will get and how they should use the results.

d/
--
Dave Crocker <dcrocker-at-brandenburg-dot-com>
Brandenburg InternetWorking <http://brandenburg.com>

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