Re: Updated IESG Statement "IESG Processing of RFC Errata for the IETF Stream"

[Spencer Dawkins at IETF <[e-mail]>]

A bit more than +1 here ...

On Sat, May 8, 2021 at 8:55 AM Michael Richardson <[e-mail]>
wrote:

>
> Brian E Carpenter <[e-mail]> wrote:
>     > Does the IESG plan to catch up on old reported errata that have
> never been processed?
>
>     > There are three here for example:
>     > https://www.rfc-editor.org/errata/rfc6275, as much as 4 years
>     > old. There may be a lot more lurking.
>

Can I just thank Brian for not picking something from TSV?

Martin and I reeked at that, although we were making progress after a year
or two ... Mirja inspired me to Do Better, but I don't remember us getting
to zero. Based on
https://www.rfc-editor.org/errata_search.php?rec_status=2&area_acronym=tsv&errata_type=2&presentation=table
including one errata reported by Alfred Hoenes in 2010, I'm guessing we
never did.

But this informs my background below.


> We need to fix the tooling to delegate to WG chairs to propose actions.
> Maybe we want ADs to confirm (like milestones), but I don't think we'll
> ever
> deal with backlog until we can easily keep up with current efforts.
>

This is my +1 for Michael, but I want to provide a bit of background here.

There is a pretty big range of topics in a single area, between areas. In
TSV, I could pretty trivially process technical errata for some working
groups, but for other working groups, I had paid almost no attention to
them for years, before becoming AD (I love NFSv4, but I was only vaguely
aware that NFS was now running over TCP).

I am pretty sure that there are some serving ADs who are responsible for
working groups that they've never followed and had to subscribe to the
mailing lists when they were seated, and had never even looked at those
working group charters (especially not the historical charters). I suspect
that's more true in some areas than others, but that's just a guess.

As long as working groups exist, it's likely that WG chairs have fewer
errata to look at than ADs, and also that they are more likely to be
familiar with the documents and topics from their own working groups.

So, yes, PLEASE consider doing with errata what has been done with
milestones. That would make a huge difference for at least some errata from
current working groups, and if the ADs end up dealing with the deep end of
the swamp without an active working group (or even an active mailing list),
well, that's just part of the job. Today, they own all of the swamp.

This is much more likely to work well than nag messages (ADs have some of
the most fabulous mail filters I've ever seen, just in order to survive,
and once you figure out you won't be recalled if there's a 10-year-old
reported errata in your area, there's no going back!).

Best,

Spencer


> --
> Michael Richardson <[e-mail]>   . o O ( IPv6 IøT consulting )
>            Sandelman Software Works Inc, Ottawa and Worldwide
>