Subject: [charter-tool] include BOFs?

From: "David Harrington" <[email-masked]>
Date: Tue, 21 Dec 2010 00:46:01 -0500

Hi,

I have read draft-ietf-genarea-charter-tool-02 and have some
suggestions.

1) Would it make sense to allow an AD to start a record at the
(optional) BOF stage? The IESG and IAB review starts at the BOF stage.
That might presumably be before the first proposed charter.

2) often the stages include an informal IESG meeting, and requested
IAB review.

3) It might be good if the AD cmments can be identified as discuss or
comment level. We do quite a lot of comment-level wordsmithing; it
would be good if ADs could clearly identify what  they consider to be
the critically important issues. I am not sure if the DISCUSS criteria
apply, or whether a different set of criteria would need to be
applied.

4) for 2.8, it might be good to have milestone baselines (resettable
by the AD) versus current projections (resettable by the chairs with
AD approval), so we can easily see how much the milestones have
slipped.

5) in 2.2, you might want to be able to change the name of a WG (e.g.,
from homegate to homenet). One way to handle this would be to have a
pointer to a second record that continues discussion under a new name
(and the new record should have a pointer to the previous record). 

6) the pointer to a mailing list should be able to be supplemented
when a new (e.g. an ietf list) supercedes an earlier list for
discussion. (or the official mailing list should be able to soemhow
import the old list by value rather than by reference).

7) in 2.10, it ight be useful to ensure that all earlier charters
reflect the info at the time of the earlier charter, such as the
area/AD, and the proposed WG name and acronym.

8) a keyword search might be useful for locating earlier BOFs and/or
concluded WGs. 

9) a record that holds a URL to each concluded WG might be useful
(even if all the record data is not provided by the database)

10) There should be a point, such as at external review, when new-work
is notified of a proposed WG. This may need a manual push-button to
trigger this at the appropriate time.

David Harrington
Director, IETF Transport Area
[email-masked] (preferred for ietf)
[email-masked]
+1 603 828 1401 (cell)

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From: Paul Hoffman <[email-masked]>
Date: Wed, 22 Dec 2010 18:04:23 -0800

>That might presumably be before the first proposed charter.

This works for me if it works for the IESG. I would refine it a bit to starting at the AD-sponsored BoF stage; that is, make it clear that there has to be some AD buy-in before anything appears in this tracker.

>2) often the stages include an informal IESG meeting, and requested

For the "informal IESG meeting", I'm not sure you want to formalize that as a step in the timeline. Otherwise, it becomes a more-than-informal IESG meeting.

This might (or might not) be a politically tricky question: does the IESG want to formalize an optional two steps for "requested IAB review" and "received IAB review"?

>apply, or whether a different set of criteria would need to be

Please do not ask your humble servant to assign semantics to your actions. :-) In specific, "DISCUSS" is something that has semantics for ballot positions on Internet Drafts; if you want to extend that to not-ballot-positions on not-Internet-Drafts, I should not be doing that here. Having said that, if y'all come up with a few labels (like "blocking", "minor", and so on, but really these need to be your words, not mine), I would extend section 2.3 to cover tags on comments.

>AD approval), so we can easily see how much the milestones have

Section 2.8 is about the body of the charter, not the milestones. I'll add a different requirement that it must be easy to compare the milestones in the proposed charter to current reality.

>(and the new record should have a pointer to the previous record).

Good catch.

>import the old list by value rather than by reference).

Yep.

>area/AD, and the proposed WG name and acronym.

Yep.

>8) a keyword search might be useful for locating earlier BOFs and/or

Yep.

>(even if all the record data is not provided by the database)

Yep.

>trigger this at the appropriate time.

It should definitely be manual. Added.

--Paul Hoffman, Director
--VPN Consortium

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From: Russ Housley <[email-masked]>
Date: Mon, 27 Dec 2010 18:59:50 -0500

I did not do a complete read of the document, but I was looking at it for other reasons, so I thought I would share the comments that emerged with the list.

Section 2.1 -- why is a step-by-step process needed?  It seems to me that the AD should fill in a very simple form, and hit a 'create charter record' button.  It should fail if there is already a record by the proposed name, otherwise it should succeed.  This should not be complex.

Section 2.2 -- any AD should be able to make changes.  The Datatracker has an AD role, and it is used to determine access to many things.  However, all ADs have equal access to everything.  This works will because changes are kept in the history.  Thus, a history of changes (and who made them) is needed here too.

Section 2.3 -- again, and AD can move the charter through the process.

Section 2.3 -- the state machine seems incomplete to me.  I see the process this way:

(A) AD posts a draft charter for "informal" discussion.
    [This may lead to mail list discussion and the posting of one or
    more charter updates.]

(B) AD submits a draft charter for "internal review."
    [The proposed WG is added to the "Current List" of Proposed Working
    Groups, and it automatically appears on the "Working Groups under
    IESG Review" Web page.  The draft charter is sent by email to the
    IESG, the IAB, and the proposed WG Chairs, if they have been named.
    This may lead to mail list discussion and the posting of one or
    more charter updates.]

(C) The AD decides that the charter is ready for external review.
    [The draft charter is placed on the agenda for an upcoming Telechat.]

(D) WG Review (This discussion takes place on the Telechat)
    [The IESG decides if the WG is ready for external review. If not,
    the draft charter goes back to the drawing board or is shelved. If
    so, a "WG Review" message is sent to the IETF Announcement List with
    a copy to the WG mailing list, if it exists, and blind copies to the
    proposed WG Chairs, if they are known. A separate "WG Review"
    message is sent to [email-masked]. Finally, the draft charter
    is placed on the agenda for the next Telechat. Of course, discussion
    may lead to the posting of one or more charter updates.]
    
(E) WG Action Discussion (This takes place on the Telechat)
    [The IESG decides if the WG is ready to be approved.  If not, the
    draft charter goes back to the drawing board or is shelved. If so,
    the proposed WG is deleted from the "Current List" of Proposed
    Working Groups, and it is automatically removed from the "Working
    Groups under IESG Review" Web page. If the mail list is not already
    in place, it is created.  Either way, it is added to the web page of
    WG mail lists. A "WG Action" message is sent to the IETF Announcement
    List with copies to the Chairs of the new WG and to the WG mailing
    list.]

Section 2.4 -- There needs to be two kinds of comments: discuss and comment.  This should reuse as much of the document ballot semantics (and code) as possible.

Russ