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

["Spencer Dawkins" <[e-mail]>]

Thanks, Alex, for submitting a draft. We're working on our next rev of
WGS(A), and you're helping me focus on some things I hadn't thought
about (sufficiently).

I'm responding to the draft and to Larry's note in one e-mail (so
there are comments below reflecting my thoughts about Larry's thoughts
about your thoughts). My comments are pretty high-level (this is not a
SIR CARDing, by any means).

- I happen to also be typing on a proposal to stick stuff IN a draft,
as opposed to sticking stuff ABOUT a draft on a web page. I hear what
Larry is saying about how often the state might change, and it is
irritating to put out two versions of the draft, one for the consensus
call and one to include the result of the consensus call. The problems
I have with "putting it on the web page" are (1) IETF-hosted web pages
are program-generated, so we need custom software development for the
secretariat to make this happen, and (2) lots of groups are using
"additional web pages" now to include material that's not carried on
the WG home page, but there's no consistency for these pages. At the
very least, the draft would need to contain a pointer to a web page,
or casual readers won't see them. As Harald says, draft version
numbers are cheap, so maybe issuing more draft versions is the best we
can do.

- I agree with Larry about having an enumerated set of states - maybe
we could figure this set out, but I don't think we know them now (at a
consensus level). It was too easy for me to think of new reasons for
WGS in Seoul for me to think I've exhausted the list of reasons, and
I'm not a very imaginative guy - a lot of reasons for WGS could map
onto specific states in this draft. This makes me even more cautious
about the web page approach, if we need custom software development
every time we tune our list of enumerated states. WGs have been using
"additional web pages" for a while, because WG chairs have more
control over the contents than they have over the IETF-hosted web
pages.

- I like the idea of making it easy for automated tools to find this
information.

- I like the idea of including dates like "next revision scheduled
for", or "reviews solicited by", if people will use them.

- WGS will require responsive WG chairs (in order to have any effect),
and this draft seems to require them to be even more responsive (in
order to have any effect), because the necessary sampling rate of
state changes is probably higher.

One meta-comment - Alex's proposal would make the world a lot better
place for people who aren't up-to-their-armpits in a working group
trying to figure out what's going on, and Larry's suggested additions
to a working group web page would also. I don't know if we're
chartered to think about this or not (Scott?), but I hope somebody
is... the level of obscurity for our work, for people who don't
subscribe to a working group's mailing list, is pretty high.

Spencer

From: "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
>
> .
> newtrk
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>


.
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