Re: Guidelines for authors and reviewers

[Paul Hoffman <[e-mail]>]

At 7:43 PM -0400 5/30/08, Suresh Krishnan wrote:
>I agree that tone might be a bit strong but this can be easily fixed 
>in the document. e.g. Replace
>
>"The authors are expected to respond to the reviews within a
>  reasonable amount of time."
>
>with
>
>"It is considered polite to respond to the reviews within a
>  reasonable amount of time.
>
>but it might be more tricky to define "reasonable amount of time". 
>Do you feel that it is out of the scope of this document to define 
>this? If so, we can take it out of the document. But doing so 
>diminishes the guiding value of the document.

If you want the document to have "guiding value", it really is an 
update to RFC 2026. The PUFI BoF experience at the last IETF might 
dissuade you from trying to do that; maybe not.

In the Tao, Susan and I tried hard to keep focus on helping the 
readers remember that everyone in the IETF is a person, most are 
volunteers, and we come from very different backgrounds with very 
different expectations about how each other will (and should!) act. 
That's quite different than RFC 2026, for very good reason, I believe.

>>This document emphasizes reviews going to authors instead of 
>>reviews going to WGs or, in the case of individual submissions, 
>>reviews going to mailing lists. In the Tao, we emphasize the value 
>>of communications to groups so that the group can agree, amplify, 
>>show disinterest, or disagree. In the WGs I have co-chaired, the WG 
>>got good value out of some of the GenART and SecDir reviews in that 
>>it made the whole WG think about the topics brought up. This may be 
>>a fundamental difference in view between this document's authors 
>>and my preferences, but I think the discussion of where reviewers 
>>should be sending their reviews is an important one for the IETF 
>>community to have.
>
>Agree. And this topic (the recipient list of the review) is 
>something I think hard about before I send out any review.

That's good to hear, but I didn't see it reflected in the document; 
maybe your co-authors had a different slant. Regardless, my 
preference is to encourage group communication during reviews for 
anything other than editorial nits and "I was told to read this; I 
did; it was fine" reviews. Group communication, in both directions 
for a review, helps everyone. It also helps prevent a WG hearing that 
"I changed this thing we had all agreed to because I was told to by { 
a security person | an IAB member | an ex-AD | ... }". Those kinds of 
changes tend to make a document weaker if they aren't agreed to and 
possibly modified by the WG who worked on the document.

--Paul Hoffman, Director
--VPN Consortium
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