Subject: Proposed Policy on ID submission deadlines

From: Thomas Narten <[email-masked]>
Date: Tue, 21 Sep 2004 14:12:10 -0400

The IESG discussed the proposal below last week. We were favorably
inclined to go forward with it, but decided it would be good to check
with wg-chairs first in case we missed something.

The context of this is that prior to the San Diego IETF, we received a
complaint that a revised document (specifically, a -00 draft submitted
during the week before the first cutoff, followed by a revised -01
version submitted during the final cutoff week) was rejected and not
published. This was in response to a poorly advertised/documented
policy designed to prevent revision of "placeholder IDs".

Anyway, in order to clarify and better document just what the policy
is, we put the following together (with thanks to Ted for drafting the
first version).

Make sense?

Thomas

In order to allow participants to prepare for face-to-face meetings
and to ensure that a common document set is available for that
preparation, the IETF sets document submission deadlines prior to each
IETF plenary meeting.  Documents must usually be submitted two weeks
prior to the meeting; initial version of documents (i.e., -00 drafts)
must be submitted three weeks prior to the meeting.  Working group
chairs must approve all initial versions which will use their working
group acronym, (i.e., draft-ietf-<wgname>) and they are expected to
inform the Secretariat approximately one week in advance of the
initial draft deadline which new drafts will be approved.  The exact
dates are announced in the meeting announcements and listed in the
"Important Meeting Dates" section of the IETF web site.

Initial versions are required to be in early because working group
participants will need to allot longer review times to versions which
have not been previously considered.  A document which has been
previously published and is re-titled with a working group title is
still treated as an initial version, as the name adjustment is usually
a signal of adoption by a working group and may trigger initial review
by some participants.  Working group chairs are always free to
schedule discussion of non-working group drafts, and should use them
when re-titling would cause confusion over the need for review.

A document may be revised after submission as an initial draft and
before the second document deadline if the authors have received
substantial comment from initial review.  If the working group chairs
believe, however, that the initial submission was put forward only to
avoid the deadline and was not complete, they may choose not to
schedule discussion of the draft.

For interim meetings, the working group chairs scheduling the meeting
may schedule a draft deadline by which input drafts are expected and
may choose not to schedule discussion of drafts which are received
late.  The Secretariat will not, however, decline submissions for
working groups holding interim meetings, as this would be logistically
impractical.

---

From: "Randy Presuhn" <[email-masked]>
Date: Fri, 24 Sep 2004 14:56:44 -0700

Hi -

> From: "Thomas Narten" <[email-masked]>
> To: <[email-masked]>
> Sent: Tuesday, September 21, 2004 11:12 AM
> Subject: Proposed Policy on ID submission deadlines
...
> is, we put the following together (with thanks to Ted for drafting the
...

Yes, but the proposed text isn't just a clarification.  It's a change.
Specifically, it requires -00 drafts to be submitted earlier than is
required by current policy.  I'm not strongly opposed to the change,
but I do object to it slipped in under the guise of clarifying and
documenting existing policy.

Randy

---

From: Bob Hinden <[email-masked]>
Date: Fri, 24 Sep 2004 15:47:45 -0700

Thomas,

It's good to see this written down.  However, I don't think the text 
justifies the deadlines.

>"Important Meeting Dates" section of the IETF web site.

I never understood why w.g. chair approval for a -00 w.g. document need to 
be a week before the first deadline.   Seems to me that as long as the 
approval is sent in when the document is submitted that should be time 
enough.  It would be sampler to have the document author send the w.g. 
chair approval along with the draft.  These -00 w.g. documents are already 
required to be submitted a week early.  This additional week requirement 
for w.g. chair approval seems arbitrary and unnecessary to me.

>when re-titling would cause confusion over the need for review.

I had thought the reason for the two deadlines was that it was more work 
for the secretariat to process an -00 w.g. document.  If this not the case 
and, as described in text above, most drafts becoming working group 
documents have already been reviewed and approved by the working group, I 
don't see that this extra week is really needed.  The important action that 
should have caused people to read the draft was when the working group 
decided to accept the document as a working group document.  The changes in 
most -00 w.g. documents are usually incremental.

Thanks,
Bob

---

From: Loa Andersson <[email-masked]>
Date: Thu, 30 Sep 2004 09:55:31 +0200

All,

have not followed this thread closely, but my immediate
reaction is, given that we agree that the task of the
working groups are to put out well written and specified
standards, the Internet Draft publication process should

- support this
- be as easy and intiutive as possible
- the rules below need to be understood in their context
   and not be enforced "to the letter"

I.e the process should support us in getting the drafts
published as needed.

I don't know for wg's in general, but for all working
groups there I've been active it is not like the initial
publication is any surprise and I don't see much value
to the week eraly publication, rather just some extra
effort  required.

The "normal" history of a draft is that it comes to the
working groups as draft-indicidual-wgname-phoo-00.txt,
and then goes through as discussion climbing to approx -04,
then is adopted as a working group document - possibly
merge with other drafts - after polling a face-to-face
meeting and the working group mailing list, so why do we
need the extra week?

That said I undertand the need for the week when it comes
to -00 individual submissions, especially if they are to
be discussed at the upcoming meeting.

/Loa

-- 
Loa Andersson

Principal Networking Architect
Acreo AB                           phone:  +46 8 632 77 14
Isafjordsgatan 22                  mobile: +46 739 81 21 64
Kista, Sweden                      email:  [email-masked]
                                            [email-masked]

---

From: Gorry Fairhurst <[email-masked]>
Date: Thu, 30 Sep 2004 10:20:27 +0100

Once again, we seem to have terse rejects being issued for ID 
submissions. Can I make a plea for the rejects to indicate the issue 
that has caused the ID not to be published?

This is very frustrating for those involved (many of whom have spent 
hours trying to fix formatting and technical issues, and are then 
confronted by something that is unhelpful and unclear).

Is anyone else experiencing the same sort of issue?

Gorry

P.S. I finally tracked down the extra "space character" that was in the 
IPR boiler plate and have now fixed the ID.

Email form ID submission:

 > Please check the file because it's incorrect. And resubmit with
 > correct one.
 >
 > Thanks.
 >
 > At 12:43 PM 9/28/2004, Marie-Jose Montpetit wrote:
 >
 >> Please find the draft-ipdvb-arch-01.txt attached. We intend to 
submit it to WG Last Call.
 >>  Regards.

<snip>

---

From: "Acee Lindem" <[email-masked]>
Date: Thu, 30 Sep 2004 08:33:05 -0400

I haven't had anyone complain to me yet. However. I agree that
if a draft is rejected it definitely should include the full log
of errors from the ID checker. How else are people going
to learn?

---

From: Bob Hinden <[email-masked]>
Date: Thu, 30 Sep 2004 06:39:26 -0700

Gorry,

At 02:20 AM 09/30/2004, Gorry Fairhurst wrote:

>Once again, we seem to have terse rejects being issued for ID submissions. 
>Can I make a plea for the rejects to indicate the issue that has caused 
>the ID not to be published?

I wonder who got the first bounce :-)

The bounce I got listed the text I was missing.  It made it easy to fix 
it.  I don't know how the secretariat is doing the bounce process.

Bob

---

From: Paul Hoffman / VPNC <[email-masked]>
Date: Thu, 30 Sep 2004 09:18:16 -0700

At 10:20 AM +0100 9/30/04, Gorry Fairhurst wrote:
>P.S. I finally tracked down the extra "space character" that was in 
>the IPR boiler plate and have now fixed the ID.

The extra space character!?!? Please say more. If we're going to have 
to go down to that level (which we shouldn't, of course), we're going 
to need all the help we can get.

--Paul Hoffman, Director
--VPN Consortium

---

From: Gorry Fairhurst <[email-masked]>
Date: Thu, 30 Sep 2004 18:03:47 +0100

There were, in fact, two unrelated problems:

(i) A set of boiler plate which doesn't pass the ID-Nit checker, which 
I'll send to the ID-Nit author, because I still can't fathom why it 
failed ... (but have managed to fix this by pasting from another ID).

(ii) A terse reject, which was mis-interpreted by the recipients.

Gorry :-)

Paul Hoffman / VPNC wrote:

> The extra space character!?!? Please say more. If we're going to have to 
> go down to that level (which we shouldn't, of course), we're going to 
> need all the help we can get.
> 
> --Paul Hoffman, Director
> --VPN Consortium
> 
>

---

From: "Barbara B. Fuller" <[email-masked]>
Date: Thu, 30 Sep 2004 14:05:03 -0400

Hi Gorry:

When I read the rejection message that was sent, I could understand why you 
were frustrated.  However, I looked into the situation and there is indeed 
an explanation.

The reason for rejecting the I-D was unrelated to the boilerplate, which 
was correct.  The problem was that the I-D  being submitted was an update 
to a document that does not exist in our I-D database.  The individual that 
sent the rejection message *intended* to send the following message:

 > Please check the filename because it's incorrect. And resubmit with
 > correct one.
 >
 > Thanks.

Granted, the message is still "terse," but the reason for rejection is 
clear.  Unfortunately, she was typing fast and omitted "name" after 
"file."  She did, however, send another message to the submitter a couple 
of hours after the first message which said:

 > Hello,
 >
 > Could you please check once again the file name for this internet-draft.
 > It was given incorrectly. There is no such draft with such file name in 
the directory.
 > Thanks.

I understand that the issue has now been resolved and apologize for the 
confusion caused by the typo.

Regards,

Barbara
---------------------------------------------------
At 05:20 AM 9/30/2004, you wrote:

>This is very frustrating for those involved (many of whom have spent hours 
>trying to fix formatting and technical issues, and are then confronted by 
>something that is unhelpful and unclear).
>
> >> Please find the draft-ipdvb-arch-01.txt attached. We intend to submit 
> it to WG Last Call.
> >>
> >>  Regards.
>
><snip>
>

------------------------------------------------
Barbara B. Fuller
Acting Executive Director
Internet Engineering Task Force

Natick, Massachusetts Office:

Phone: +1-508-650-4020
Fax:     +1-508-650-4639

Reston, Virginia Office:

Phone: +1-703-620-9053
Fax:     +1-703-620-9071