Re: Is a new state needed in the WG states for drafts?

[Henrik Levkowetz <[e-mail]>]

Hi Pete,

(and also Gunter, see the last few paragraph of mine below regarding the
number of potential WG documents the MPLS WG has to deal with)

A couple of points which I'd like to mention in reply to Pete's comments,
which you may not have realized:

On 2013-04-03 21:12 Pete Resnick said the following:
> On 4/3/13 8:50 AM, Henrik Levkowetz wrote:
>> Considering that every WG can choose which, if any, of the states to use,
>> what do you think about adding another state which may be used before the
>> "Call For Adoption By WG Issued" state, named something like "Candidate
>> for WG Adoption"?
>>    
> 
> Given the discussion thus far, this now seems like an exceedingly *bad* 
> idea to me. A document can be a candidate for adoption in several WGs at 
> the same time, and AFAICT there is no way to represent that with a 
> single state, since a document entering the WG tracker can only have a 
> single WG associated with it.

1. Yes, but there may be a point to this, which I don't think has been mentioned
this time around, but was taken up when draft-ietf-proto-wgdocument-states
which became RFC 6174 was discussed:  Being able to set a state on a non-WG
document can work as a flag, telling other WG chairs that one group is already
looking at a document from some point of view, so that they will start by talking
to the chairs that have so marked it, instead of starting a parallel discussion
in their own WG without knowledge that a draft is already under consideration
elsewhere.

> This is exactly why Robert finally beat 
> the ADs about using the "AD is Watching" state for simply indicating 
> that a document is at the beginning of the process and you are keeping 
> an eye on it: It stays with you from then on until some other AD picks 
> up the document or you mark it as DEAD, which people don't like to do 
> because it looks bad.

It could be that the cases aren't parallel...

> It seems to me that the suggestion to revamp the "Related Documents" 
> list is really what is needed. People have the personal tracker to track 
> what documents they are interested in. What you want is for the WG to be 
> able to have its own "personal tracker" so that other people can see 
> what documents the WG is interested in. They can be documents from other 
> WGs, or documents that are proposed for adoption, or whatever else the 
> WG wants to use that list for.

2. Some more data here:  The MPLS working group has currently *almost 50*
active related documents.  With the additional state, as proposed, the
chairs would be able to signal which of these were actually under consideration
for adoption at any given time.  As far as I can tell, this meshes very well
with other uses of the WG document states.

The only effect of depriving the working group of a "Candidate for WG Adoption"
state is that they will be using the current "Call For Adoption By WG Issued"
state to signal the same thing, but with a larger chance of miscommunication
because it doesn't clearly say what they want to indicate.

> It seems to me that you are trying to use the hammer of "WG document 
> state" to drive in this screw. Put down the hammer. Find a screwdriver. 
> You're only going to end up with a mashed up screw that doesn't hold 
> very well.

While the hammer/screw analogy can often be used to dissuade people from doing
silly things, I actually don't think it's applicable here, in view of my point
1. above.


Best regards,

	Henrik