Subject: Re: [Tools-discuss] "Distantly related Internet-Drafts"?

From: Dhruv Dhody <[email-masked]>
Date: Fri, 1 Oct 2021 12:31:20 +0530

Hi Spencer,

I can confirm what Lars pointed out, the manage document list in the
datatracker
- https://datatracker.ietf.org/wg/$WG_NAME/documents/manage/
has a rule set "All I-Ds with particular text/regular expression in the
name"  -$WG_NAME-
which is the reason you would be seeing those I-Ds.

Thanks!
Dhruv

On Fri, Oct 1, 2021 at 11:55 AM Lars Eggert <[email-masked]> wrote:

> Hi,
>
> On 2021-10-1, at 1:59, Spencer Dawkins at IETF <
> [email-masked]> wrote:
> > The first document filename starts with "draft-dawkins-quic". I expect
> this one to be listed as a related Internet-Draft. The filename is
> "draft-author-wgname-*", as suggested for Internet-Drafts in
> https://www.ietf.org/standards/ids/guidelines/#7, and it is related to
> the QUIC working group.
> >
> > The second and third document filenames start with
> "draft-dawkins-sdp-rtp-quic". I wasn't expecting to see these listed as
> related to the QUIC working group. These drafts are intended for discussion
> on the MOQ ("Media Over QUIC'') non-WG mailing list, and (if I understand
> the guidance I've gotten from the TSV and ART ADs correctly) are actually
> out of scope for the QUIC working group.
> >
> > Is it possible that the datatracker is scanning the filename looking for
> any occurrence of a working group name, not just in the third position?
>
> IIRC, when I was a QUIC co-chair, I manually tweaked the pattern for the
> QUIC WG in the datatracker settings, because people were submitting
> QUIC-related I-Ds that were not showing up on our datatracker page and we
> hence didn't learn about until (sometimes much) later.
>
> Since I'm not a co-chair anymore, I don't have access to the "manage
> document list" button anymore, so I can't verify this.
>
> Thanks,
> Lars
>
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---

From: "Andrew G. Malis" <[email-masked]>
Date: Fri, 1 Oct 2021 07:41:03 -0400

Spencer,

For my WG (pals), that rule is: ^draft-[^-]+-pals-

Which I interpret as any document starting with draft- , followed by any
text without a - , then followed by -pals- . So in this case, it would
require pals to be in the third position.  Perhaps you could ask the quic
chairs to put the regex back to this form.

Cheers,
Andy

On Fri, Oct 1, 2021 at 3:02 AM Dhruv Dhody <[email-masked]> wrote:

>> > Is it possible that the datatracker is scanning the filename looking
>> for any occurrence of a working group name, not just in the third position?
>>

---

From: Carsten Bormann <[email-masked]>
Date: Fri, 1 Oct 2021 13:53:46 +0200

> - https://datatracker.ietf.org/wg/$WG_NAME/documents/manage/ 

I find it a bit weird that we can’t see that page (of course updating access should be limited to the WG’s chairs and ADs).

Grüße, Carsten

---

From: Lucas Pardue <[email-masked]>
Date: Fri, 1 Oct 2021 13:44:03 +0100

> document list" button anymore, so I can't verify this.

I've become accustomed to the behaviour now. To my mind out of scope for a
charter doesn't mean unrelated. I think the datatracker does a decent job
with tags that it can let us clearly mark drafts that are serious
contenders for adoption vs other more tangential things.

If there's a problem that the current pattern causes then we can have a
discussion but otherwise I'd leave it as is.

---

From: Spencer Dawkins at IETF <[email-masked]>
Date: Fri, 1 Oct 2021 08:25:48 -0500

Dear All, but especially Lars,

> discussion but otherwise I'd leave it as is.

Thanks for helping me understand - and I feel much better about asking this
question in my original post:

>From the "Spencer is not the center of the universe" department, is it
reasonable to list individual drafts as "related", if the filename includes
the working group name in any position? If so, maybe that just needs to be
documented someplace (it doesn't look like
https://www.ietf.org/standards/ids/guidelines has been updated since Russ
Housley was IETF Chair), and I should be aware of that when choosing
filenames.

It looks like the current behavior in some working groups is actually MORE
helpful than what I thought the datatracker-wide behavior was - and I
didn't know that the behavior wasn't datatracker-wide, either.(*)

So, no, please don't change the behavior just to match
https://www.ietf.org/standards/ids/guidelines! You guys are Doing The Right
Thing.

(this is the "Lars" part) But it might be a good thing to update
https://www.ietf.org/standards/ids/guidelines to match current practice -
the only problem I'm seeing is that the current behavior violates the
Principle of Least Astonishment. I thought I knew where my drafts would
appear, but I was wrong.

Best,

Spencer

 (*) I've been co-chair for something like 5 working groups, but 4 of them
were before the datatracker had significant support for working group
chairs, and (as Lars noted) ADs don't see the "manage document list"
button, so I COMPLETELY missed that I have access to
https://datatracker.ietf.org/wg/cellar/documents/manage/. Seriously, thanks
for catching me up. And everyone who knows me, knows that "catching Spencer
up" is a full-time job ...

---

From: Lucas Pardue <[email-masked]>
Date: Fri, 1 Oct 2021 14:35:17 +0100

On Fri, Oct 1, 2021 at 2:26 PM Spencer Dawkins at IETF <
[email-masked]> wrote:

> <snip>
> https://www.ietf.org/standards/ids/guidelines! You guys are Doing The
> Right Thing.
>

 In the interest of sharing, QUIC's manage page has the 5 following rules
set

* All I-Ds with particular text/regular expression in the name -
^draft-[a-za-z0-9]+-quic-.+
* All I-Ds associated with a particular group - quic
* All RFCs associated with a particular group - quic
* All I-Ds with particular text/regular expression in the name -
^draft-[^-]+-quic-
* All I-Ds with particular text/regular expression in the name -
^draft-.+-quic($|-.+)

I won't take the credit for these and I daren't touch them in case the
house of cards comes tumbling down. But it seems to me the default rules
"associated with a particular group" are dead simple, and the datatracker
provides enough regex freedom to tinker away.

Cheers,
Lucas

---

From: Bob Hinden <[email-masked]>
Date: Fri, 1 Oct 2021 08:34:30 -0700

Spencer,

> On Oct 1, 2021, at 6:25 AM, Spencer Dawkins at IETF <[email-masked]> wrote:
> 
> ….
> So, no, please don't change the behavior just to match https://www.ietf.org/standards/ids/guidelines! You guys are Doing The Right Thing.

+1

> 
> (this is the "Lars" part) But it might be a good thing to update https://www.ietf.org/standards/ids/guidelines to match current practice - the only problem I'm seeing is that the current behavior violates the Principle of Least Astonishment. I thought I knew where my drafts would appear, but I was wrong.
> 

I would have thought it is a good thing that anything related to QUIC showed up on the list of related drafts, even if the QUIC w.g. isn’t actively working on them.  It allows people in the w.g. to follow other things related to QUIC.

Bob

---

From: Spencer Dawkins at IETF <[email-masked]>
Date: Fri, 1 Oct 2021 12:01:08 -0500

Hi, Bob,

On Fri, Oct 1, 2021 at 10:34 AM Bob Hinden <[email-masked]> wrote:

> I would have thought it is a good thing that anything related to QUIC
> showed up on the list of related drafts, even if the QUIC w.g. isn’t
> actively working on them.  It allows people in the w.g. to follow other
> things related to QUIC.

Oh, I'm convinced. I have https://github.com/ietf/id-guidelines open in
another window, to add an issue to describe this evolved behavior, after
lunch.

Best,

Spencer

p.s. QUIC may be a special case, but it doesn't seem to be THAT special ...

---

From: Lars Eggert <[email-masked]>
Date: Mon, 4 Oct 2021 10:47:18 +0300

Hi,

> (this is the "Lars" part) But it might be a good thing to update https://www.ietf.org/standards/ids/guidelines to match current practice - the only problem I'm seeing is that the current behavior v…

I think POLA would be violated if draft-foor-bar-topic didn't show up as related to the BAR WG - but it does.

If *other* WGs also choose to manually add draft-foor-bar-topic to their list of related documents, maybe because "topic" is of interest to them, that should not really cause much astonishment, IMO.

Thanks,
Lars

---

From: Spencer Dawkins at IETF <[email-masked]>
Date: Mon, 4 Oct 2021 09:34:05 -0500

Hi, Lars,

On Mon, Oct 4, 2021 at 2:47 AM Lars Eggert <[email-masked]> wrote:

> If *other* WGs also choose to manually add draft-foor-bar-topic to their
> list of related documents, maybe because "topic" is of interest to them,
> that should not really cause much astonishment, IMO.
>

You're correct that it's not the Principle of What Least Astonishes Spencer
(POWLAS), and that's probably a good thing, but *I* was astonished that my
draft popped up on the QUIC datatracker document page, for what that's
worth. And if there's any way for me to find out what groups might also
list my draft as "related", I don't know what that way is.

Thank you for the helpful discussion in
https://github.com/ietf/id-guidelines/issues/52, but I noted your comment
there:

I also think that we already encode way too much information into draft
names, using a pretty arcane format, and encoding more information will be
even more confusing, esp. to newcomers.

I'd definitely agree with you there - I'm replying here, just to say that
more publicly - but I wonder what a better way to provide this information
would be, and (especially) whether authors providing more/better
information in a less arcane format would be worthwhile for at least some
working groups, that are not named for the protocol(s) they are responsible
for.

But that's a better question for chairs of working groups like MMUSIC,
AVTCORE, 6MAN, and TSVWG (off the top of my head), and this thread has
popped up on WGCHAIRS, so the right people can be thinking about that.

I know everyone will Do The Right Thing, of course.

Best,

Spencer