Subject: Schedule for -00 WG drafts

From: Harald Tveit Alvestrand <[email-masked]>
Date: Wed, 22 Dec 2004 23:17:42 +0100

Hi,

the approval procedures for initial (-00) WG drafts (draft-ietf-wgname-) 
has seemed to cause a lot of confusion.

Let me see if I can attempt to say what the current procedure is, and then 
suggest a change to it.

The main point of the procedure is: An initial WG draft must be approved by 
the WG chair.

Outside of the "meeting crunch", the normal procedure is:

- Author sends in the draft
- The I-D publisher sends back a response to the author saying "you need 
your WG chair's approval"
- The WG chair sends an "I approve" message to the I-D publisher
- The draft is published

During the "meeting crunch", the secretariat tries to streamline as much as 
possible. So it has said to the WG chairs: "If you tell us the names of the 
initial WG drafts you expect to see, we can approve them without asking you 
- please send the list 1 week before the -00 deadline".

In this case, the procedure becomes:

- Author sends in the draft
- The I-D publisher checks it against the list
- If it's on the list, it's published. If not, revert to procedure above.

Clear so far?

Now the suggested modification to procedure:

- If the e-mail with the draft comes from a WG chair, it gets published.

This does NOT mean that the WG chair becomes an author. The normal case 
would be that the editor sends to the WG chair, and the WG chair forwards 
the message to the I-D publisher; the author is still the author.

But it removes the need for the WG chair to generate those lists.

Does it make sense to people to add this possibility?

And - if this makes sense - do we still need the two other procedures 
described above, can we remove one of them, or can we say "this is how all 
-00 WG drafts come out"?

Of course, this will all be changed once the online draft submission tool 
comes out....

                        Harald

---

From: Rohan Mahy <[email-masked]>
Date: Wed, 22 Dec 2004 14:45:32 -0800

On Dec 22, 2004, at 14:17, Harald Tveit Alvestrand wrote:

> Hi,
>
> the approval procedures for initial (-00) WG drafts 
> (draft-ietf-wgname-) has seemed to cause a lot of confusion.
>
> Let me see if I can attempt to say what the current procedure is, and 
> then suggest a change to it.
>
> The main point of the procedure is: An initial WG draft must be 
> approved by the WG chair.
>
> - The I-D publisher sends back a response to the author saying "you 
> need your WG chair's approval"
> During the "meeting crunch", the secretariat tries to streamline as 
> much as possible. So it has said to the WG chairs: "If you tell us the 
> names of the initial WG drafts you expect to see, we can approve them 
> without asking you - please send the list 1 week before the -00 
> deadline".
>

yes

> This does NOT mean that the WG chair becomes an author. The normal 
> case would be that the editor sends to the WG chair, and the WG chair 
> forwards the message to the I-D publisher; the author is still the 
> author.
>

yes.

> described above, can we remove one of them, or can we say "this is how 
> all -00 WG drafts come out"?

we still need the previous mechanism, since every once in a very long 
while, the relevant WG chairs are not awake at 5 am the day of the 
draft deadline when some WG -00s get submitted.

> Of course, this will all be changed once the online draft submission 
> tool comes out....

I can't wait.

thanks,
-rohan

---

From: Jeffrey Altman <[email-masked]>
Date: Wed, 22 Dec 2004 17:47:10 -0500

the process I have been following is:

  * author submits to internet-drafts and cc's the chair
  * chair replies to message with approval
  * draft gets published

Jeffrey Altman

---

From: Sam Hartman <[email-masked]>
Date: Wed, 22 Dec 2004 17:54:19 -0500

>>>>> "Harald" == Harald Tveit Alvestrand <[email-masked]> writes:

    Harald> Now the suggested modification to procedure:

    Harald> - If the e-mail with the draft comes from a WG chair, it
    Harald> gets published.

    Harald> This does NOT mean that the WG chair becomes an
    Harald> author. The normal case would be that the editor sends to
    Harald> the WG chair, and the WG chair forwards the message to the
    Harald> I-D publisher; the author is still the author.

    Harald> But it removes the need for the WG chair to generate those
    Harald> lists.

    Harald> Does it make sense to people to add this possibility?

Yes.  However you probably want to give instructions on how wg chairs
should avoid mangling drafts.  For example presumably forwarding with
something that quotes every line of a file would be a bad idea.
Possibly forwarding the draft as a mime attachment would be a good
idea--I don't know.

---

From: Henrik Levkowetz <[email-masked]>
Date: Thu, 23 Dec 2004 00:06:05 +0100

> Of course, this will all be changed once the online draft submission tool 

[tools-team had on]

The document describing the draft submission tool gives a process which
is quite similar to the 2 current ways of handling this - the new third
option was considered but did not make it.

I have two counter questions:  

   Does this 3rd way of handling -00 drafts fulfil a clear need, and
   is it worth it to change the process to this if we skip the two
   other procedures?

   What benefits would this give, if we didn't skip one or both of the
   other procedures?

[tools-team had off]

[chair hat on]

I'd go along with this change as a possible replacement for the option
of submitting a list of expected -00 drafts, especially if it had some
expressed benefits over the pre-submitted lists.  I wouldn't want to
have it as the primary or only mechanism for -00 submissions, though -
for normal -00 submissions I definitely prefer that the drafts go
straight from authors to publishers, and sending in an 'OK', rather
than myself being a draft relay point.

	Regards,

		Henrik

---

From: Tony Hansen <[email-masked]>
Date: Wed, 22 Dec 2004 21:56:46 -0500

Harald Tveit Alvestrand wrote:
> would be that the editor sends to the WG chair, and the WG chair 
> forwards the message to the I-D publisher; the author is still the author.

What's taken as the submission date for cutoff purposes? The time the 
author sent it to the WG chair, or the time the WG chair forwarded it to 
the I-D publisher? Should there be a 1-2 day leeway after the author 
cutoff date for such I-D submissions?

	Tony Hansen
	[email-masked]

---

From: Ralph Droms <[email-masked]>
Date: Wed, 22 Dec 2004 23:32:40 -0500

I've been using an alternate procedure:

- Author sends in draft, CCs me
- I follow up immediately with an approval to
   the ID publisher

No need for extra publisher->me->publisher round trip, no
chance for me to screw up draft formatting with an
extra forwarding hop.

- Ralph

---

From: Brian E Carpenter <[email-masked]>
Date: Thu, 23 Dec 2004 10:24:35 +0100

Rohan Mahy wrote:

...
> while, the relevant WG chairs are not awake at 5 am the day of the draft 
> deadline when some WG -00s get submitted.

What he said

    Brian

---

From: Alexey Melnikov <[email-masked]>
Date: Fri, 24 Dec 2004 11:56:15 +0000

> Does it make sense to people to add this possibility?

Maybe it is just my bad luck, but I needed this procedure several times. 
In one case the author has sent a draft to the mailing list and said 
that he is on holiday for a month. The author also said that a chair can 
submit a document on his behalf.

> all -00 WG drafts come out"?

It sounds that we need to keep at least one of the two previous 
procedures, I personally prefer the one when a WG chair can just reply 
"Ok, publish it".

> Of course, this will all be changed once the online draft submission 

Alexey

---

From: Paul Hoffman / VPNC <[email-masked]>
Date: Fri, 24 Dec 2004 15:32:46 -0500

>- If the e-mail with the draft comes from a WG chair, it gets published.

I'll agree with the many other people who seem to think this is a bit 
fragile. A simpler, and smaller change, is that all WG -00's MUST 
have at least one WG chair CC'd on the submission, and one of the 
chairs MUST send a "this is OK" message to the I-D secretary by 
Wednesday morning after the cutoff.

If all WG chairs are on vacation, the WG loses; on the other hand, if 
the WG chairs know that there will be a -00 going in and that they 
will be unavailable, they can prod the document authors to submit 
earlier.

The lack of an official -00 before a meeting is not a disaster; 
dozens of WGs have had to deal with this over the years, and have 
managed just fine. Let's not overload the process for this.

--Paul Hoffman, Director
--VPN Consortium