RE: [newtrk] draft-rousskov-newtrk-id-state-00

[Larry Masinter <[e-mail]>]

> http://www.ietf.org/internet-drafts/draft-rousskov-newtrk-id-state-00.txt

There are a couple of problems with the mechanism. The state of
a draft, the state of consensus on a draft, changes more rapidly
than the draft itself. So putting the state of the draft inside
the draft leads to a problem -- you submit a draft, then poll the
working group for consensus, then, after the working group has
discussed the draft, the state changes.

Since the status of drafts and working group progress changes frequently
and, unlike drafts, doesn't need to be stable, my suggestion is to
leave the internet drafts alone, and focus on the working group
web page.

Secondly, it's unlikely that the status will fit into a limited number
of neat categories. While it would be nice if you could just
assign a token out of a simple enumeration, but often the status
is much more complex.

My suggestion is this:

Every working group has a web page, but the chairs and draft authors
don't have much input into it.

http://www.ietf.org/html.charters/newtrk-charter.html

says "No Current Internet-Drafts", for example. What if each
working group had, on its web page, for each internet draft,
a "status" field which a working group chair could change?

In fact, what if each Internet Draft had a web page which listed,
at a minimum, its status, but also might contain open issues,
proposed resolutions, pointers to discussions in the mail archives,
etc.? 

This would give you more transparency, it would allow for
better updates, and would give participants better information.
We used issue-list tables in many working groups, and they've
been quite useful. Why don't we make them more generally available?

In the simplest case, the draft-status page could be auto-generated,
with a simple administrative form for updating the status among the
enumerated set, but we could make it possible for people to make
more extensive updates.

It might be convenient if each Internet Draft contained the URL
of the web page that described its status. (And, even better, an issue
list with issues, proposals, possible resolutions, etc, but that's
another story).

Larry
-- 
http://larry.masinter.net

.
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