Re: Telechat reviews [Re: Tooling glitch in Last Call announcements and records]

[Barry Leiba <[e-mail]>]

We should make it a general policy to add two weeks to the last call
period when a document is long, for some value of "long" (I might say
over 60 pages of substance (not counting change logs and such)).  I
try to get to assigning ART-ART reviews a couple of times a week, but
that still means that, depending upon the timing, with a two-week last
call I might be giving a reviewer only a 7- or 8-day deadline for a
100+-page document, and I always blanch when I have to do that.  While
ADs regularly have to review long documents with a week or two notice,
I think it's unreasonable to expect last-call reviews from
directorates/review-teams on that notice for long documents.

We decided on the two-week last call period at a different time, when
the IETF was a different organization.  Maybe we should re-think it
now, and keep in mind that an extra two weeks of last-call review is
*not* going to be the most significant delay in a document's life
cycle.

Barry, ART-ART manager

On Fri, Oct 11, 2024 at 5:53 PM Murray S. Kucherawy <[e-mail]> wrote:
>
> Hi John,
>
> On Fri, Oct 11, 2024 at 2:01 PM John C Klensin <[e-mail]> wrote:
>>
>> Thanks for the clarification.  Seems entirely reasonable with one or
>> two qualifications.  First, if you (and/or other areas) are doing
>> things that way, the review needs to be posted to the Last Call list
>> well before the Last Call closes out so there is time for people from
>> the Area and the broader community to comment on it.   Second, if the
>> posted end of Last Call date is unreasonable or unattainable for some
>> reason, I'd hope the responsible AD could be notified of that early
>> in the Last Call window -- at least no later than a week before it is
>> closed -- rather than, e.g., after the close date.  That would permit
>> actions, if needed, to be taken without things looking like a game of
>> "Gotcha" with the AD and WG and/or author(s) responsible for the
>> document.
>
>
> For what it's worth, in my time on the IESG, I haven't found the need to manage this vigorously.  If there's a directorate review I'd really like to have, I have the discretion to wait for it before scheduling the document onto a telechat even though Last Call has ended.  If the review has come in but it provokes discussion, I have the discretion to wait for that discussion to resolve before moving forward.  If we're talking about a document that isn't one of mine and a review comes in from my area review team raising something on which I'd like to dive deeper, I can use DISCUSS for that (so long as I am diligent about clearing it once the discussion is had, of course).  That's been my strategy for a while now and it's never raised a complaint, which (so far, at least) includes the document you're talking about here.
>
> The thing I used to determine if the review has come in is the datatracker.  I will check the last-call list too, but the datatracker provides a nice snapshot of which reviews have been requested and which have come in, and is usually where I start when checking on a document's status.
>
> Just to keep this all public: For this particular document, I have pinged the assigned directorate reviewers to ask them to upload their reviews ASAP on this document.  As I said elsewhere, I might be fine advancing a document missing a couple of directorate reviews, but not all of them.  If they don't come in soon, I'll reach out to the review team chairs to ask for reassignments.
>
> Lastly, I would definitely appreciate a notification (automated or otherwise) when a directorate review is going to be late.  Right now all the tracker tells me is "not done", which could mean "not done yet" or could mean "don't hold your breath".
>
> -MSK