Re: Last Call: <draft-secretaries-good-practices-06.txt> (IETF Working Groups' Secretaries) to Best Current Practice

[Martin Vigoureux <[e-mail]>]

Murray,

thank you for your review. Please see in-line.

-m

Le 03/12/2014 03:45, Murray S. Kucherawy a écrit :
> On Thu, Jun 12, 2014 at 6:26 AM, The IESG <[e-mail]
> <mailto:[e-mail]>> wrote:
>
>     The IESG has received a request from an individual submitter to consider
>     the following document:
>     - 'IETF Working Groups' Secretaries'
>        <draft-secretaries-good-practices-06.txt> as Best Current Practice
>
>     The IESG plans to make a decision in the next few weeks, and solicits
>     final comments on this action. Please send substantive comments to the
>     [e-mail] <mailto:[e-mail]> mailing lists by 2014-07-10.
>     Exceptionally, comments may be
>     sent to [e-mail] <mailto:[e-mail]> instead. In either
>     case, please retain the
>     beginning of the Subject line to allow automated sorting.
>
>     Abstract
>
>         The Working Group Secretary's role was succinctly defined in RFC
>         2418. However, this role has greatly evolved and increased both in
>         value and scope, since the writing of RFC 2418. This document
>     updates
>         RFC 2418 by providing a new definition of the Working Group
>         Secretary's role. This document also provides a compilation of good
>         practices and general guidelines regarding the fulfilment of the
>         role.
>
>         This document is intended for established Working Group Secretaries,
>         individuals motivated by taking up that role, or anyone else simply
>         interested in understanding better the Working Group Secretary's
>         role. This document may also be useful for Working Group Chairs to
>         better appreciate and help develop the value of Working Group
>         Secretaries.
>
>         This document would be published as part of BCP 25.
>
>
> I've read this document and am generally in support of its progression.
> However, I have a few questions and comments.
>
> The filename portion of the document says "good practices".  This is a
> minor point since that name will vanish on publication, but since it
> also does say it in the Abstract, I wonder if the original intent may
> have gotten lost.  This seems to be an accretion of possible functions
> of a WG Secretary, but doesn't really explain how best to perform those
> functions (which I infer from the filename).

I like to view it as: "it is good if a secretary does all that"

> The document amounts to an enumeration of the functions of the WG
> co-chair, minus the authority to make consensus calls and moderate the
> mailing list.  Could not the co-chair delegate at least the list
> moderation function to a secretary?  What about issuing and tracking
> calls for document adoption?

In principle Chairs can delegate whatever they want.

> Does ensuring documents are in the correct state include submitting them
> to the IESG for publication, or is that a reserved function for the
> co-chairs?

As far as I remember, a "Delegate", in the datatracker sense, can press 
the submit to IESG button.

> The document makes reference to several tools or components of tools
> (the datatracker in particular) that I've never seen.  That's not to say
> they don't exist, but I haven't seen them and couldn't find them just
> now, so it makes me wonder if the tools team would have to do a bunch of
> work to get reality to match what's written here.  For example, I just
> went into the datatracker and as a working group co-chair I have
> privileges in that system with respect to my working groups.  However, I
> didn't see anywhere in there that I can declare a WG Secretary or
> delegate some or all of my powers to that person, despite the fact that
> Section 4 says such things "shall" be done.  Is this something that a
> co-chair would have to request of the Secretariat directly or via a
> sponsoring Area Director?  If not, does the tools team intend to add that?

I am not sure to understand; which of the mentioned tools you do not know?
As said by Loa, an e-mail to the Secretariat does the trick.
Yet, if I remember correctly, once you have a secretary for your WG you 
can delegate powers to that person from the datatracker.

> Similarly, I'm a little concerned about writing something that
> specifically calls out things in our tools that might change over time,
> even over a short time if we so decide, rendering this text inaccurate.
> For example, rather than referring to [e-mail]
> <mailto:[e-mail]>, it might be better to say simply
> "the working group chairs' mailing list" or suchlike, in case we were to
> for example drop "tools." from the addresses.

I am sure readers will handle the situation where such aliases have changed.

> I think that if appointment of WG Secretaries who do most or even some
> of these functions has become commonplace, then this should officially
> update RFC2418.  What RFC2418 says now is a four-line section; if that's
> obsolescent, we shouldn't leave it that way without at least offering a
> pointer to the more current practice.  More generally, if RFC2418 is
> obsolescent, I think we should think about updating it in its entirety.

Following discussions on 06 we have decided that this document would not 
update 2418. We have produced 07 in that sense.

> The end of Section 3 might overlap or even conflict with
> draft-leiba-extended-doc-shepherd (currently expired but not
> forgotten).  Is there a plan to reconcile these, or am I wrong about
> there being common ground here?

I doubt there is any conflict.

> I was under the impression that Security Considerations has to do with
> impact on the Internet, not on our processes, and so the content of that
> section isn't really needed (other than to point out what I just said),
> but I could be wrong about that.

I think the content of that section is important, even if not relevant 
to Internet, and it does not fit so badly in a section called Security 
Considerations.

> I think that's all I have.  Thanks for putting this together.

Thank you for your appreciation.
>
> -MSK