Re: Question about pre-meeting document posting deadlines for the IESG and the community

[Brian E Carpenter <[e-mail]>]

Murray,

You said (the context is below):

> Doesn't matter what's said on the list, the document in the tracker is the source of truth;

I don't see why it isn't equally true that:

"Doesn't matter what's said on github, the document in the tracker is the source of truth"

because that's a matter of definition - the most recently published draft *is* the draft. github is just a manifestation of a formal or de facto design team. We've had design teams and off-list discussions for decades.

Regards
    Brian Carpenter

On 17-Mar-24 15:49, Murray S. Kucherawy wrote:
> On Sun, Mar 17, 2024 at 12:26 PM Pete Resnick <resnick=[e-mail] <mailto:[e-mail]>> wrote:
> 
>     That leaves the "deadlines are useful" reason. And that's a perfectly
>     good reason, on a WG-by-WG basis, to allow chairs to close the
>     submission for their WGs if they want to impose a deadline. But it
>     doesn't justify shutting the queue for all WGs (some of which might not
>     be meeting f2f) or all documents (some of which might not be associated
>     with any WG or RG), or all chairs (some of whom might have good reasons
>     for a late add).
> 
> 
> Your email and mine crossed in flight, but I agree.
> 
>     (During a chat last night, Barry reminded me that when a change was
>     proposed several years ago, some chairs objected to the change because
>     they did not want the responsibility to allow exceptions and instead
>     wanted it to be an AD override so they could claim powerlessness to
>     insistent authors. I find such an argument a sign of complete
>     dysfunction.)
> 
> 
> +1.
> 
>     Indeed, even talking in terms of a "posting cutoff" is a mistake. If
>     mailing list discussion within the moratorium period comes to consensus
>     (with text) on a particular issue in a document, that is just as
>     problematic (or not) in keeping everyone on the same page preparing for
>     f2f discussions. Does that mean that we should have an IETF-wide 2-week
>     moratorium on mailing list discussions before f2f meetings? Of course
>     not (I hope). But some chairs may wish to say, "On issue X, let's close
>     discussion on the list until the f2f meeting, as I think a more
>     interactive discussion (perhaps with people with
>     Transport/Security/I18N/whatever expertise present) would be more
>     helpful." And that would be fine. Again, let's discuss what we actually
>     want to have happen, and then decide if we need some grand principle or
>     rule imposed, at an IETF/Area/WG level, for that and what tooling (if
>     any) we need to make it happen.
> 
> 
> I think when the datatracker was the only source of "truth", this was easier to think about.  Doesn't matter what's said on the list, the document in the tracker is the source of truth; it was still possible to have some common practice of some sort.  Now we not only have that and the list, but there's GitHub and all of its aspects where development can happen no matter what the datatracker says or does.  The landscape is very different today than it used to be.
> 
> So I agree, the discussion probably needs to be re-framed, because it used to be easy to establish constraints to meet the perceived pre-meeting review goals, but now, not so much.
> 
> -MSK, solo