Subject: [Icar] Re: I-D ACTION:draft-alvestrand-icar-xarea-00.txt

From: Brian E Carpenter <[email-masked]>
Date: Mon, 19 Apr 2004 10:12:11 +0200

Generally, I like this, but I am concerned that we must also install
a process for *early* cross-area review (to deal with Bad Ideas before
people over-invest in them).

I see no reason why these teams can't be used for non-WG documents
and for RFC Editor documents, and very good reasons why they should
be (i.e. those documents need the same level of review as everything else).

A comment on the end of section 1.1:

>    ALTERNATE MODEL: Instead of aligning the reviewers with IETF areas
>    (which have many reasons for existence, but coverage of problem space
>    is not one of them), we could imagine picking a list of "problem
>    areas" (formalities, security, manageability, scalability,
>    congestion, internationalization....) and pick a reviewer for each
>    such "problem area" for the team.

I don't think this is a good idea. Although an Area-based structure may
not be ideal, it has the merit of being easy to set up and explain.
Setting up a problem-based structure would be potentially controversial
and generally more complicated.

   Brian

> A URL for this Internet-Draft is:
> http://www.ietf.org/internet-drafts/draft-alvestrand-icar-xarea-00.txt

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---

From: "Spencer Dawkins" <[email-masked]>
Date: Mon, 19 Apr 2004 06:46:09 -0500

From: "Brian E Carpenter" <[email-masked]>
To: "icar WG" <[email-masked]>
Sent: Monday, April 19, 2004 3:12 AM
Subject: [Icar] Re: I-D ACTION:draft-alvestrand-icar-xarea-00.txt

> and generally more complicated.

We've talked previously about the need to involve generalists for this
kind of review. An area-based structure seems easy to start with, but
unlikely to involve lots of generalists.

I guess the problem I see with an area-based structure is that
"cross-area review" can require multiple (cross) areas. I've seen
people say "maybe apps people don't need to look at BGP specs", and
that could be right, but if we learned anything from site-local, it's
that we needed review from apps, transport, other internet groups, and
probably others I can't think of. The need for broad review may be the
rule, not the exception.

I note that even in directorates, we've used multi-area teams
(wireless), and suspect that this would be a good idea in more cases
than we've used it in the past.

At some point, having a single cross-area review board makes more
sense. I'm not sure whether we are at that point or not, but I'd like
us to make that decision, instead of assuming a single review board is
obviously the wrong thing to do, and an area-based structure is the
only choice.

Spencer

---

From: Alex Rousskov <[email-masked]>
Date: Mon, 19 Apr 2004 10:46:44 -0600 (MDT)

On Mon, 19 Apr 2004, Spencer Dawkins wrote:

> sense. I'm not sure whether we are at that point or not,

Spencer,

Could you please clarify what is the axis along which we may
eventually reach the point where "a single cross-area review board
makes more sense"? The size of the IETF? The number of reviewers? The
number of good pool managers available? Something else?

> but I'd like us to make that decision, instead of assuming a single
> review board is obviously the wrong thing to do, and an area-based
> structure is the only choice.

FWIW, I believe that a single review board/pool for early and late
cross-area review is at least worth seriously considering. Reviewers
will have an option to augment their public profiles with their areas
of expertise, of course.

Perhaps somebody with a lot of IETF experience can post an unbiased
(i.e., avoiding adjectives) list of pros/cons for a single pool and
segregated boards options?

Thanks,

Alex.

---

From: "Spencer Dawkins" <[email-masked]>
Date: Mon, 19 Apr 2004 20:30:49 -0500

Hi, Alex,

From: "Alex Rousskov" <[email-masked]>
To: "Spencer Dawkins" <[email-masked]>
Cc: "icar WG" <[email-masked]>
Sent: Monday, April 19, 2004 11:46 AM
Subject: Re: [Icar] Re: I-D ACTION:draft-alvestrand-icar-xarea-00.txt

> number of good pool managers available? Something else?

You actually guessed better than I would have, without prompting, but
since you ask - the absurd limit would be if we had one review board
per area, and area directors started saying, "my area review board
needs to review drafts before I'll vote for them", so all documents
got pairwise cross-area reviews with every area review board.

This is the absurd limit. How close are we? Well, I've spent time in
transport, so when we were doing triggers for transport, we needed to
talk to people in transport (no problem), Internet, applications, and
security. Like, duh.

The NON-duh part was that, out of all the very helpful feedback we
received, the MOST helpful feedback was from Dave Meyer in OPS. So in
the event, we DIDN'T get cross-area review from routing (although we
would have needed it, if we'd gone further with multi-homing), or from
Sub-IP, or from the General area, but we weren't far from mesh
connectivity.

Would I have been thrilled to chase down four or five area review
boards? Well, actually, not really.

So, I guess the question for the mailing list is, is most of your work
stuff that needs cross area review with one or two areas (so
area-based review teams make sense), or with three or more areas (full
meshes aren't that great at scaling, IIRC).

Spencer

---

From: Harald Tveit Alvestrand <[email-masked]>
Date: Mon, 26 Apr 2004 10:16:44 -0700

Spencer,

are you thinking that there's one single (large) pool of reviewers from 
which the set of reviewers for a given document is drawn, or are you 
thinking about a single group of reviewers where all reviewers review all 
documents?

I'm pretty sure you mean the former, but want to make sure.

One thing I like about a team-based approach is that teammates get to know 
each other and can learn from each other. And besides, it lessens the work 
of picking reviewers for a document - rather than having to choose 7 or so 
reviewers, you just choose one team.....

but I'm biased..... I wrote this one :-)

---

From: "Spencer Dawkins" <[email-masked]>
Date: Mon, 26 Apr 2004 21:42:32 -0500

Hi, Harald,

From: "Harald Tveit Alvestrand" <[email-masked]>
To: "Spencer Dawkins" <[email-masked]>; "icar WG"
<[email-masked]>
Sent: Monday, April 26, 2004 12:16 PM
Subject: Re: [Icar] Re: I-D ACTION:draft-alvestrand-icar-xarea-00.txt

> I'm pretty sure you mean the former, but want to make sure.

Yes, that's correct - the scaling problems with the latter are obvious
even to me :-}

> reviewers, you just choose one team.....

Perhaps I was pre-judging your draft without reading it carefully
enough - you really ARE talking about a TSV area review team (to pick
an area) that contains one reviewer from each OTHER area, appointed by
every OTHER area's director(s), right? I didn't get this the first
time around. Sorry.

Spencer

---

From: Harald Tveit Alvestrand <[email-masked]>
Date: Tue, 27 Apr 2004 07:28:38 -0700

> every OTHER area's director(s), right? I didn't get this the first

right - apologies for being unable to make it clearer - this has been hard 
for other readers to grasp too!

               Harald