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

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

[moved from tools-discuss]

On 11-Oct-24 08:06, John C Klensin wrote:

On Thursday, October 10, 2024 13:23 -0500 Robert Sparks
> <[e-mail]> wrote:

<snip>

> 
>> The practices of directorates continuing to change assignments or
>> provide comments after last call is something I'll leave to the
>> IESG to steer. Note, however, that almost all of the directorates
>> also provide telechat reviews, not just last-call reviews.
> 
> (That brings us to an issue that I thought to mention in my earlier
> note, decided against it, and may regret mentioning now.  If this is
> worth pursuing, it should probably be on the IETF list, not here.
> 
> At least in principle, there is a difference between (i) Last Call as
> a community discussion mechanism whose effect is to inform the IESG
> about community consensus and (ii) Last Call as a mechanism to feed
> information, opinions, and other advice into the IESG so the ADs can
> determine what they think is the right decision for the Internet.  If
> those directorate/area reviews are given privileged status -- input
> into the telechats that ordinary IETF participants don't get, more
> flexibility about deadlines, etc. -- then the "treat this like any
> other review" boilerplate of most of those reviews becomes a joke or
> worse.  It would be somewhat different if those really were
> directorate or area reviews -- reviews that were written (or
> finalized) only after specific discussion about the document within
> that area or directorate and that represented consensus in that
> group.  But they often are not -- they are more often the opinions of
> an individual who comes up in rotation or draws a short straw.  If
> the latter is the case, the community should probably be insisting
> that reviews that claim to be (or are treated as) representative of a
> group rather than that of the author as an individual be posted
> several days before a Last Call ends so that other IETF participants
> can comment on whatever is said.
> 
> So telling me/us that directorates provide telechat reviews in
> addition to or instead of Last Call reviews is a source of concern,
> not comfort.

When I was a Gen-ART reviewer it was fairly clear that telechat reviews
had two properties:

1. They were public.

2. They were really supposed to be saying either "All my previous
IETF Last Call comments have been dealt with" or "The following
IETF Last Call comments have not been dealt with: ...".

If they go outside those boundaries, yes, there could be a problem.

(Example: https://mailarchive.ietf.org/arch/msg/gen-art/yS5GdXvzqZhMdueyTjQjRlUVjvg,
which was sent to  [e-mail], [e-mail], [e-mail], and [e-mail])

     Brian