Re: RANT: posting IDs more often -- more is better -- why are we so shy?

[tom p. <[e-mail]>]

----- Original Message -----
From: "Warren Kumari" <[e-mail]>
To: "Michael Richardson" <[e-mail]>
Cc: <[e-mail]>
Sent: Thursday, March 02, 2017 7:40 PM

> I've worked with a number of different authors, and there does seem to
> be a wide range of preferences.
>
> I personally like to publish early, and often; I'll often publish a
> new version integrating just one persons comments (or, of they are
> nits, batch up a few sets into one version). If there are lots of
> comments going back and forth, I don't think it is easy for WG
> participants to mentally keep track of all the different comments, how
> they interrelate, and what the final text will look like. I also think
> that it is politer to respond to feedback by integrating and
> publishing a new version, instead of just saying "Thanks, I'll get to
> them sometime....".
> Committing to GitHub kinda accomplishes this, but a: it's harder for
> participants to find, and b: the github version is a second class
> citizen.
>
> But, other authors seem to have a different view -- they'd much rather
> get everything fully squared away, all comments addressed, all 't's
> crossed and 'i's dotted.

How sensible other authors are!

A number of I-Ds I have seen in the recent past got a comment from one
experienced in the field which led the author to issue a revised
version, which prompted a comment from another experienced in the field
contradicting the first comment which led the author to ..

I give up and await IETF Last Call, or if it is an I-D where my interest
is not major, give up altogether; life's too short to track a series of
somersaults.

The IETF proceeds at a leisurely pace, taking a week or two or more for
comments to appear, so updating more often than that is
counter-productive.

Tom Petch

> One of the stickier points is what to do during WGLC -- unfortunately,
> in many groups this is where the majority of the review and feedback
> happens, and it is often viewed as poor form to revise during WGLC.
> It's often hard for the *authors* to keep track of what the consensus
> is when there are lots of comments, what the new text would look like,
> etc -- expecting random WG participants to do so is (IMO) unreasonable
> and leads to frustration and overlapping comments. I'd personally
> rather publish new versions *during WGLC* saying "This is what this
> looks like now, does this address your issues?" than trying to explain
> that we will move text from Section 3.2.5.4.3 bullet 9 to Section
> 1.7.4 to address Mike's comment, but that will mean that Billy's
> comments no longer apply because it removes the text that he's
> commenting on, other than the nits about the case of the acronym,
> which we agreed to change globally, except in section 8, because it is
> quoting from another RFC. Confused yet?
>
> W
>
> On Wed, Mar 1, 2017 at 11:04 AM, Michael Richardson
> <[e-mail]> wrote:
> >
> > For the third time in two days I find myself, when asking others for
opinions
> > about some text, pointing at github commit logs.  With the beautiful
> > makefiles we often have, one can't even depend upon having a
formatted .txt
> > version there!
> >
> > This is not a rant for or against git or github, but rather about
what I
> > perceive as a shyness about posting intermediate versions of
Internet Drafts
> > to the datatracker.
> >
> > I understand that in academia, they never like letting half-baked
ideas out,
> > and so the -00 that we see from academics are often overdue and
overly
> > polished.  I know I can't fight that, but at least the -01, etc.
could be
> > issued faster?
> >
> > I've even heard some push back from people along the lines of, "wow,
that ID
> > has 27 revisions, is it really stable?", and my feelings have often
been more
> > along the lines of, "wow, that revision has 27 revisions, the
authors are
> > really keen and responsive".
> >
> > I appreciate for some reviewers that having more revisions implies
that they
> > think they have to look at the text more often.
> >
> > But given the diff utilities, it shouldn't matter how many revisions
there
> > were before times you look, as you can just skip the intermediate
versions.
> >
> > --
> > Michael Richardson <[e-mail]>, Sandelman Software Works
> >  -= IPv6 IoT consulting =-
> >
> >
> >
>
>
>
> --
> I don't think the execution is relevant when it was obviously a bad
> idea in the first place.
> This is like putting rabid weasels in your pants, and later expressing
> regret at having chosen those particular rabid weasels and that pair
> of pants.
>    ---maf
>