RE: Guidelines for authors and reviewers

> -----Original Message-----
> From: ietf-bounces@ietf.org [mailto:ietf-bounces@ietf.org] On 
> Behalf Of Joel M. Halpern
> Sent: Saturday, May 31, 2008 3:12 AM
> To: IETF Discussion
> Subject: Re: Guidelines for authors and reviewers
> 
> Comment inline, with most of the discussion elided.  I 
> believe that one particular question gets to the heart of 
> what is bothering me.
> 
> Ted Hardie wrote:
> > At 4:08 PM -0700 5/30/08, Joel M. Halpern wrote:
> ...
> >> On design decisions, there is an even more complex 
> tradeoff.  I have 
> >> reviewed several documents which had questionable design 
> decisions.  
> >> In one review I recently wrote that I did not expect the following 
> >> comment to change the WG consensus, but that I considered the 
> >> specific mechanism used by the document a bad idea.  If I had not 
> >> known that the particular mechanism had been discussed, I 
> might have put it more forcefully.
> >> On the other hand, a while back I reviewed a document which had a 
> >> mechanism which, although the working group had indeed 
> agreed on it, 
> >> fundamentally didn't work.  I don't care how much they agreed.  It 
> >> needed to be changed.  And they changed it.  (It was 
> incumbent upon 
> >> me to provide a clear and coherent explanation of why it 
> was broken.)
> > 
> > These both sound like excellent reviews:  you expressed 
> your personal 
> > design preferences in the first instance but did not try to 
> force it 
> > over the consensus of the working group, and pointed out a 
> showstopper 
> > in the second.
> > 
> > Now, show me in this draft how these two cases are distinguished, 
> > which is critical to getting a review done right?
> 
> The problem I have is that I do not know how to write text in 
> a draft that distinguishes those two.  The line between them 
> is very tricky, and possibly subjective.
> And part of the problem is to avoid turning it into a fight.  
> If all review comments get clear, reasonably timely 
> responses, there is room for the discussion without acrimony.
> 

Here is a key issue, and this is why ensuring that reviews are responded
in a timely manner is essential. As an AD I have been too often in the
situation to review a document which is on the IESG agenda for approval
(which means less than one week for me to review and get to an educated
opinion for my IESG balloting) and to find that expert reviews were
never answered by the authors or the document shepherd. 

Dan
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