Subject: RE: Proposed Policy on ID submission deadlines

From: [email-masked]
Date: Sat, 25 Sep 2004 15:49:03 +0300

Thomas,

> 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.

I agree with Randy & Bob; I don't quite see the reason for this change,
and don't think its inclusion is appropriate in this documment.

John

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From: Thomas Narten <[email-masked]>
Date: Sat, 25 Sep 2004 11:06:36 -0700

> documenting existing policy.

To clarify, this is not actually a change AFAIK. The submission date
for all -00 IDs has been one week before the final cutoff. This has
been practice for a number of IETF cycles already.

It is also the case (AFAIK) that an independent submission that
becomes a WG document (with a change in draft name to reflect the new
ID) has in practice been considered a "new" ID by the secretariat,
thus has also been subject to the earlier deadline. So this is also
not new. (It has also caught authors off guard, becuase they think of
their adopted WG document as being a revision.)

I also agree with others that one of the motivations for having two
deadlines is to spread the processing load for pre-meeting submissions
across two weeks, rather than having all of them come in at once. So I
think there are several motivations.  Personally, I think that having
the earlier deadline for all true initial drafts is reasonable,
because they presumably need more time for review.

But, in practice, we do have the issue of individual IDs being
converted to WG documents and then getting caught by the -00 rule,
when in fact they are revisions. While I can understand that it is
desirable for those to be considered "revisions" and then be treated
differently, this further complicates the rules for the secretariat,
and increases their load at the worst time for them. So in the writeup
we did, that wasn't included.

One can also make the argument that if an individual document becomes
a WG document (usually done at a meeting), having the document not get
revised and reissued until the next-meeting deadline is not really a
good sign, it means 3-4 months have  elapsed. Do we really/need to
make an exception for those cases? I'd rather see documents reissued a
bit sooner.

And, FWIW, I strongly agree with the notion that documents should not
become WG documents until they have received significant prior review
by the WG, so I'd expect most -00 WG documents to not contain all
sorts of unreviewed/unknown stuff.

Bob Hinden <[email-masked]> writes:

> 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.

This rule has been mostly set by the secretariat, and I agree it
doesn't need to be "IESG Policy", per se. (I.e, its more an
operational issue than policy.) But I think it is reasonable to defer
to the secretariat to some degree with regards to what they need in
order to deal with these approvals. If the current "week early"
deadline causes problems, I'd like input from the secretariat as
well. Also, the idea that a WG chair doesn't know 3 weeks before the
IETF meeting that a particular document will become an WG document
seems like a situation that does not happen in practice often, if at
all. So if these approvals aren't happening, it seems like that the
chairs could also be paying more attention to the key deadlines.

Thomas

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From: Thierry Ernst <[email-masked]>
Date: Mon, 27 Sep 2004 16:36:53 +0900

> chairs could also be paying more attention to the key deadlines.

On that part, I'm not enclined to approve a WG draft-00 that I haven't
read yet, so I don't think that approving before the draft is actually
submitted is a good idea. 

Ralph Droms <[email-masked]> wrote:
> I agree with Bob and John.  In fact, I thought the earlier
> deadline was in place to give time for the IETF secretary
> to get WG chair permission for publication.

With that comment from Ralph, woundn't it make sense to state that WG
draft-00 must be sent to the chairs at least 1 week before the -01
cut-off date  ? (so, the -00 cut-off date would be for "sending to WG
chairs" instead of "sending to secretariat").

The -01 cut-off date could be kept for individual submission only. 

In addition, I would vote for a single cut-off i.e. treat all the
documents the same way, it's easier for everyone, unless the spread is
necessary for the secretariat.

Thierry.

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From: Harald Tveit Alvestrand <[email-masked]>
Date: Mon, 27 Sep 2004 18:36:01 +0200

--On 25. september 2004 11:06 -0700 Thomas Narten <[email-masked]> wrote:

>> 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.
>
> doesn't need to be "IESG Policy", per se.

If I remember rightly, it was instituted because the Secretariat had far 
too much experience with trying to hunt down WG chairs to get approval for 
-00 submissions after they had been submitted, and this task interfering 
with the rush.

It takes far less secretariat processing power to look at the 
"pre-approved" list and say "yes - it's there" than to send mail to the 
chairs, figure out that they haven't answered, re-send the mail, get an 
answer, re-locate the document and publish it.

                 Harald

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From: Paul Hoffman / VPNC <[email-masked]>
Date: Mon, 27 Sep 2004 13:36:29 -0700

At 6:36 PM +0200 9/27/04, Harald Tveit Alvestrand wrote:
>If I remember rightly, it was instituted because the Secretariat had 
>far too much experience with trying to hunt down WG chairs to get 
>approval for -00 submissions after they had been submitted, and this 
>task interfering with the rush.

But there's an easier way, one that many WG chairs have been doing 
informally for many years with -00 drafts. The author Cc's the chairs 
on the submission, then one of the chairs does a reply-all saying 
"yes, I'm the chair, and I approve this draft for the WG" (and 
hopefully remembers to elide the content of the draft on that 
message).

This means that the Secretariat has to put the draft into a "pending" 
pile until the chair replies, but that pile will be quite similar to 
the pre-approval pile they have now. Further, this method tells 
everyone what is going on in the process, which is a Real Good Thing.

--Paul Hoffman, Director
--VPN Consortium

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From: Bob Hinden <[email-masked]>
Date: Mon, 27 Sep 2004 13:59:55 -0700

Thomas,

I agree that the "proposed policy" you sent out did not introduce anything 
that was not in current practice.  I think the issue people are raising is 
that it happened without any prior discussion.  So it is good that it is 
being written down and discussed.

If the main reason for the the new draft (*-00.txt) and w.g. chair approval 
deadlines is to give the secretariat enough time to do the ID processing, 
lets just say that.

I still think that adding another week for w.g. chair approval is excessive 
and there are other ways to handle it.  Two that come to mind is for the 
author(s) to ask the chairs for approval prior to submitting and include 
this approval in the ID submittal.  The other is to send the draft to the 
w.g. chairs and have them submit the draft.    Both would make it very easy 
for the secretariat as there would be nothing to look up.

Perhaps some day the ID processing can be automatic so both of these 
deadlines can be eliminated.  Given things like the nits checker, this 
shouldn't be too hard to implement.

Somewhat independent of the deadline issue, I think it is time to rethink 
the policy of treating the transition of a draft, from an individual 
submission to a working group document, the same as a new internet 
draft.  In most cases it is not a new draft and should not be treated a 
such.  I think it would better to use the new draft model for the occasions 
when a -00 draft is really a new draft.  This does happen when the working 
asks that something be written, but is not the norm.  I would propose that 
the w.g. chairs be able to send a request to the secretariat of the form 
draft <draft-author-wgfoo-bar-13.txt> has been adopted as a working group 
document and should be renamed <draft-ietf-foo-bar-00.txt>.  I think this 
would be easier and less work for everyone involved (i.e., w.g. chairs, 
authors, and secretariat).

Your thoughts?

Bob

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From: Harald Tveit Alvestrand <[email-masked]>
Date: Tue, 28 Sep 2004 08:59:40 +0200

--On 27. september 2004 13:36 -0700 "Paul Hoffman / VPNC" 
<[email-masked]> wrote:

> informally for many years with -00 drafts. The author Cc's the chairs on
> the submission, then one of the chairs does a reply-all saying "yes, I'm
> the chair, and I approve this draft for the WG" (and hopefully remembers
> to elide the content of the draft on that message).
>
> pile until the chair replies, but that pile will be quite similar to the
> pre-approval pile they have now. Further, this method tells everyone what
> is going on in the process, which is a Real Good Thing.

Yes, as long as the WG chair answers soon, this works.

When it doesn't..... see previous message.