[rfc-i] Five-author maximum?

[paul.hoffman at vpnc.org (Paul Hoffman / VPNC)]

Greetings again. New in the pre-publication queue is:

Network Working Group                                       P. Karn, Ed.
Request for Comments: 3819                                      Qualcomm
BCP: 89                                                       C. Bormann
Category: Best Current Practice              Universitaet Bremen FB3 TZI
                                                             G. Fairhurst
                                                   University of Aberdeen
                                                              D. Grossman
                                                           Motorola, Inc.
                                                                R. Ludwig
                                                        Ericsson Research
                                                               J. Mahdavi
                                                                   Novell
                                                            G. Montenegro
                                    Sun Microsystems Laboratories, Europe
                                                                 J. Touch
                                                                  USC/ISI
                                                                  L. Wood
                                                            Cisco Systems
                                                                June 2004


                 Advice for Internet Subnetwork Designers

This seems to bust the five-authors suggestion by a significant 
number. Are each of these people really responsible for all of the 
content? Given Phil's designation as "Ed." on the top line, it seems 
likely that the author-name-padding should be removed.

--Paul Hoffman, Director
--VPN Consortium
From mallman at icir.org  Thu Jun 10 09:32:17 2004
From: mallman at icir.org (Mark Allman)
Date: Thu Jun 10 09:32:46 2004
Subject: [rfc-i] Five-author maximum?
In-Reply-To: <p06110422bcee328f9e3c@[10.20.30.239]> 
Message-ID: <[e-mail]>


Paul-

> This seems to bust the five-authors suggestion by a significant
> number. Are each of these people really responsible for all of the
> content? Given Phil's designation as "Ed." on the top line, it seems
> likely that the author-name-padding should be removed.

Let me take a swing at this.  

I editted this document, as well.  I took over from Phil for the final
push.  I was offered a spot on the author list and turned it down.  This
document was started before the 5-author limit was imposed.  The folks
(and more) on the current author list were all listed because they
contributed lots of text and expertise.  This is a big document and no
one person had the required set of expertise to author it alone.  When
the 5-author limit was imposed the list was scaled back to just Phil.
However, when we were preparing the last version of the document that
felt all wrong.  The people on the current author list had contributed
substantially.  And, it wasn't clear that we could pick 4 (besides Phil)
who clearly contributed more than folks who would then have to be left
off.  In the 5-author policy there is a bit of wiggle room and an appeal
was sent to Harald (and the IESG maybe) who seemed fine with wiggling in
this particular case -- i.e., it wasn't an oversight, it was an explicit
decision.  That's the story.

We might reasonably disagree whether it should be Phil or Phil+everyone
else, or about the general policy, or whatever.  **However**, I
completely **reject** the notion that this document is "padded" with
authors.  If one were to look at the record from the PILC WG, I think
one would see that all these folks made a substanative contribution.
Further, this was an explicit decision not an oversight.  Sorry for
being a bit sensative here, but simply counting authors and suggesting
author padding without attempting to understand the context and the
process that was used to arrive at the author list slights these folk's
work, IMO.

allman


--
Mark Allman -- ICIR -- http://www.icir.org/mallman/



-------------- next part --------------
A non-text attachment was scrubbed...
Name: not available
Type: application/pgp-signature
Size: 186 bytes
Desc: not available
Url : http://www.rfc-editor.org/pipermail/rfc-interest/attachments/20040610/74c6f8a8/attachment.bin
From paul.hoffman at vpnc.org  Thu Jun 10 09:47:23 2004
From: paul.hoffman at vpnc.org (Paul Hoffman / VPNC)
Date: Thu Jun 10 09:47:47 2004
Subject: [rfc-i] Five-author maximum?
In-Reply-To: <[e-mail]>
References: <[e-mail]>
Message-ID: <p0611042cbcee3ff7c2ac@[10.20.30.239]>

At 12:32 PM -0400 6/10/04, Mark Allman wrote:
>i.e., it wasn't an oversight, it was an explicit
>decision.  That's the story.

Sounds good to me. It's hard to know that from looking at the 
document, of course.

>We might reasonably disagree whether it should be Phil or Phil+everyone
>else, or about the general policy, or whatever.  **However**, I
>completely **reject** the notion that this document is "padded" with
>authors.  If one were to look at the record from the PILC WG, I think
>one would see that all these folks made a substanative contribution.
>Further, this was an explicit decision not an oversight.  Sorry for
>being a bit sensative here, but simply counting authors and suggesting
>author padding without attempting to understand the context and the
>process that was used to arrive at the author list slights these folk's
>work, IMO.

My point about padding was in the Phil or Phil+everyone debate, not 
whether those people did much work. In many IETF documents, more than 
5 people contribute a great deal of thought and text.

--Paul Hoffman, Director
--VPN Consortium
From dmm at 1-4-5.net  Thu Jun 10 09:53:42 2004
From: dmm at 1-4-5.net (David Meyer)
Date: Thu Jun 10 09:54:49 2004
Subject: [rfc-i] Five-author maximum?
In-Reply-To: <p0611042cbcee3ff7c2ac@[10.20.30.239]>
References: <[e-mail]>
	<p0611042cbcee3ff7c2ac@[10.20.30.239]>
Message-ID: <[e-mail]>

On Thu, Jun 10, 2004 at 09:47:23AM -0700, Paul Hoffman / VPNC wrote:
>> At 12:32 PM -0400 6/10/04, Mark Allman wrote:
>> >i.e., it wasn't an oversight, it was an explicit
>> >decision.  That's the story.
>> 
>> Sounds good to me. It's hard to know that from looking at the 
>> document, of course.
>> 
>> >We might reasonably disagree whether it should be Phil or Phil+everyone
>> >else, or about the general policy, or whatever.  **However**, I
>> >completely **reject** the notion that this document is "padded" with
>> >authors.  If one were to look at the record from the PILC WG, I think
>> >one would see that all these folks made a substanative contribution.
>> >Further, this was an explicit decision not an oversight.  Sorry for
>> >being a bit sensative here, but simply counting authors and suggesting
>> >author padding without attempting to understand the context and the
>> >process that was used to arrive at the author list slights these folk's
>> >work, IMO.
>> 
>> My point about padding was in the Phil or Phil+everyone debate, not 
>> whether those people did much work. In many IETF documents, more than 
>> 5 people contribute a great deal of thought and text.

	Definitely true. One thing we should likely keep in mind
	here is that the point of this rule (AFAIK) is to help
	out the RFC Editor (and hence streamline our
	process). There are many ways to give credit in those
	cases where there is an editor (like a Contributors
	section, distinct from the Acknowledgments section). In
	any event, that is what I have done on several occasions,
	and it seems to work pretty well.

	Dave
From falk at ISI.EDU  Thu Jun 10 10:27:07 2004
From: falk at ISI.EDU (Aaron Falk)
Date: Thu Jun 10 10:28:49 2004
Subject: [rfc-i] Five-author maximum?
In-Reply-To: <p06110422bcee328f9e3c@[10.20.30.239]>
References: <p06110422bcee328f9e3c@[10.20.30.239]>
Message-ID: <[e-mail]>


On Jun 10, 2004, at 8:56 AM, Paul Hoffman / VPNC wrote:

> This seems to bust the five-authors suggestion by a significant 
> number. Are each of these people really responsible for all of the 
> content? Given Phil's designation as "Ed." on the top line, it seems 
> likely that the author-name-padding should be removed.
>

Paul-

A reasonable question.  Hopefully, the email below will answer your 
concerns.  It was sent by a co-chair of the working group which 
produced the document (me) and sent to the responsible AD (Allison) and 
the IESG Chair (Harald).

<continued below...>

Begin forwarded message:

> From: Aaron Falk <[e-mail]>
> Date: November 3, 2003 2:30:59 PM PST
> To: Allison Mankin <[e-mail]>, Harald Tveit Alvestrand 
> <[e-mail]>
> Subject: authors for draft-ietf-pilc-link-design
>
> Allison, Harald-
>
> Because of my role in RFC Editor, I felt it would be useful to make
> draft-ietf-pilc-link-design an early test case in limiting authors.
> Some time ago, while the document was in final working group editing,
> we reduced the author count from twelve:
>
>   Phil Karn, Carsten Bormann, Gorry Fairhurst, Aaron Falk, Dan
>   Grossman, Reiner Ludwig, Jamshid Mahdavi, Saverio Mascolo,
>   Marie-Jose Montpetit, Gabriel Montenegro, Joe Touch, Lloyd Wood
>
> to one (plus the wg):
>
>   Phil Karn, editor
>   Performance Implications of Link Characteristics Working Group
>
> with a detailed contributors section immediately following the
> abstract.
>
> However, as time has passed the unfairness of this approach has
> started to grate on me and I feel that it was, basically, the Wrong
> Thing to do.  What I'd like to do is put the most significant
> contributors, who number eight:
>
>   Phil Karn, Carsten Bormann, Gorry Fairhurst, Dan Grossman, Reiner
>   Ludwig, Jamshid Mahdavi, Joe Touch, Lloyd Wood
>
> on the cover page.
>
> Reading the policy carfully
> (http://www.rfc-editor.org/policy.html#policy.authlist), there is no
> hard limit at five authors.  The policy states that the exceptions to
> the guidelines may be granted "by specific IESG request."  So, I'd
> like to ask that you request an exception with the following
> justification:
>
>   The document "Advice to Subnet Designers" is a compendium on variety
>   of topics relating (mostly) transport performance to link design
>   parameters.  The proposed authors each contributed deep expertise
>   without which the document would have been incomplete.  While this
>   document represents the consensus of the PILC working group, the
>   listed contibutors each share significant responsibility (& credit &
>   blame) for creating the document.  Listing only one name gives undue
>   credit to the sole person listed.  Listing a subset of the group is
>   unfair because each one made a significant contribution to the end
>   product.  For this reason, I would like to request that IESG solicit
>   an exemption to the five author policy of the RFC Editor.  I believe
>   they and the community will benefit from the clear association of
>   this list of authors with the content.
>
> I should note that none of the authors has requested that I do this.
> There was some grumbling when we went from twelve to one but that was
> some time ago.  I am making this request only because my conscience is
> bugging me.
>
> I am quite conscious of the potential appearance of a conflict of
> interest in this situation.  However, because the request for
> exception must come from the IESG, rather than me, I don't believe my
> role as part of the RFC Editor should play a role in making this
> decision.
>
> Thanks,
>
> --aaron
>


In response to this request, Allison suggested that I add some text 
which was meant to head off any concerns of author padding.  The 
resulting "Contributors" section describes some of the specific 
contributions of each listed author, as well as some we chose not to 
list as authors (including myself and Mark Allman):

> Contributors
>
>    This document represents a consensus of the members of the IETF
>    Performance Implications of Link Characteristics (PILC) working
>    group.
>
>    This document would not have been possible without the contributions
>    of a great number of people in the Performance Implications of Link
>    Characteristics Working Group.  In particular, the following people
>    provided major contributions of text, editing and advice to this
>    document: Mark Allman provided the final editing to complete this
>    document.  Carsten Bormann provided text on robust header
>    compression.  Gorry Fairhurst provided text on broadcast and
>    multicast issues and many valuable comments on the entire document.
>    Aaron Falk provided text on bandwidth on demand.  Dan Grossman
>    provided text on security considerations as well as on many facets 
> of
>    the document.  Reiner Ludwig provided thorough document review and
>    text on TCP vs. Link-Layer Retransmission.  Jamshid Mahdavi provided
>    text on TCP performance calculations.  Saverio Mascolo provided
>    feedback on the document.  Gabriel Montenegro provided feedback on
>    the document.  Marie-Jose Montpetit provided text on bandwidth on
>    demand.  Joe Touch provided text on multicast and broadcast.  and
>    Lloyd Wood provided many valuable comments on drafts of the 
> document.

I hope this addresses your concern.

Regards,

--aaron