Subject: re: area directors at risk

From: Allison Mankin <[email-masked]>
Date: Tue, 20 Nov 2001 11:55:13 -0500

> We (WG chairs) need to do our part in reducing AD workload.
> By proposing better charters, better documents, being better
> consensus builders, and to avoid pushing issues upon the ADs
> unnecessarily.

Kurt,

This is very well said.  You said it earlier too - the
work is far less if the WG documents are written well:

  - if they've been edited for grammar and usage.  Way
    many drafts come in to the AD with no evidence of 
    this editing pass.  (And we don't know whether the
    draft is on the marginally ok or unreadable side
    of the line till we've booted enough sense of
    the content and spent a lot of time already).

  - if they explain the context and purpose to people
    (the users) who haven't been in the WG meetings.
    The AD knows some of the context (sometimes a lot,
    sometimes less); the other IESG probably don't;
    most to the point, the users who did not attend
    IETF or who have a memory like most of us, don't
    have the context and purpose unless the doc
    presents it.

  - if they are concise (please take the extra time
    to make the document as short as possible).

Allison

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From: Erik Guttman <[email-masked]>
Date: Tue, 20 Nov 2001 18:49:24 +0100 (MET)

There are two ways we could use existing support for ADs
more effectively.

Where possible non-AD area advisors can be designated to follow WGs
and watch for drift or other warning signs which can be brought to
an AD's attention if not directly addresssed in the WG.  These 
advisors can also work on document quality before submission to the
IESG.

ADs can use WG chairs to mediate in document push-back.  The temptation 
for the IESG to impose 'malign neglect' on irremediable documents is 
great.  ADs can't 'Just say no' because this involves lots of time
to explain why, deal with conflicts arising from bruised egos, 
threatened research agendas, etc.  The WG chair can be told the 
straight story and mediate the issue with WG contributors, freeing
the IESG from a lot of odious back & forth (clearly not all, though.)

Erik

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From: Randy Bush <[email-masked]>
Date: Tue, 20 Nov 2001 10:30:48 -0800

http://www.ietf.org/ietf/1id-guidelines.txt
http://www.ietf.org/ID-nits.html

randy

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From: "Kurt D. Zeilenga" <[email-masked]>
Date: Tue, 20 Nov 2001 11:18:44 -0800

>http://www.ietf.org/ID-nits.html

And:
  http://www.iesg.org/IESG/STATEMENTS/pseudo-code-in-specs.txt
  http://www.rfc-editor.org/policy.html

Kurt

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From: Ian Cooper <[email-masked]>
Date: Tue, 20 Nov 2001 15:42:35 -0800

As an aside, the fact that this information is (so far as the URLs below 
suggest) spread out over multiple locations might be considered a Bad 
Thing(tm).

I wouldn't class myself as a clueless newbie and even I have a hard time 
finding some of these resources from time to time.

Perhaps if it were easier to find all of this information in one place we 
might find a few more I-Ds being written that actually consider all of the 
issues that are documented...