Re: Things that used to be clear (was Re: Evolving Documents (nee "Living Documents") side meeting at IETF105.)

[Ted Lemon <[e-mail]>]

On Jul 5, 2019, at 1:28 PM, Nico Williams <[e-mail]> wrote:
> Ok, so let's fix that.
> 
> My take is that a) directorates and shepherds/ADs should be expected to
> provide interim reviews as requested, b) WG chairs should request them
> when the ether the chairs believe, or the WG has consensus that, "now is
> a good time for interim review.
> 
> Interim reviews should also be announced on the [e-mail] <mailto:[e-mail]> list, but
> review feedback should be on WG list.  This invites interim reviews from
> the wider community as well.
> 
> Now, I don't know how to incentivize the wider community to provide
> interim reviews.  Reviewing I-Ds is really time-consuming and energy
> sapping for me personally -- the biggest problem is making the time and
> finding a way to get it funded when it's a lot of time.
> 
> I suspect that the directorates are short on cycles too.  I get that
> what I'm proposing may not be feasible at this time.


This is the essence of the problem, and you’ve proposed a solution that’s incompatible with it.   If it were possible to do your solution, I would agree with it.

I’m not sure there is a solution, but it would be interesting to see if there is something left once we throw out the “should be expected” idea.   Is there a way to do more interim reviews?   What is actually stopping us from doing this stuff?

A lot of times what stops me is that the document is badly written and difficult to read, and so it’s so much work to read it that I put it off until it’s too late, or give up.  It may be that it’s possible for us to get better at writing understandable and readable documents, and that this would have a greater positive impact on the process than shoulding at directorates.

What’s nice about getting better at writing understandable documents is that it’s the authors who would have to do this, and they are motivated to do what it takes to get more review (or if they aren’t, maybe it’s okay that the document died).

Do you see this as a useful thing to attempt, and if so, do you think it’s possible to do it?