Subject: RE: Clarification of I-D Submission Deadlines

From: "Lars-Erik Jonsson \(LU/EAB\)" <[email-masked]>
Date: Mon, 28 Feb 2005 15:02:54 +0100

Harald,

As one of those who still believe IETF meetings is only an optional
part of the normal IETF process, which takes place on mailing lists,
I am not sure I agree we should let meetings interrupt our normal
work more than necessary. Of course, when the staff is busy with
meeting-related work right before and during meetings, I believe it
is reasonable to have "internet-drafts" queueing up drafts for some
time and have a clear policy regarding deadlines, but to close the
draft submission function and not accept submissions seems strange
to me.

Remember that
- Not all active WGs meet at every IETF meeting
- Not all onging work items are discussed at a face2face WG meeting

Therefore, I do not agree with the motivation to reject drafts that
are received after deadline. I would rather see that submitted drafts
are always accepted, even if they are not publshed immediately. 

/L-E

> -----Original Message-----
> From: [email-masked] [mailto:[email-masked]]On
> Behalf Of Harald Tveit Alvestrand
> Sent: den 28 februari 2005 14:24
> To: Tom Pusateri; IETF Executive Director
> Cc: [email-masked]
> Subject: Re: Clarification of I-D Submission Deadlines 
> 
> 
> That's a policy matter, not a secretariat matter, so I'll 
> take a whack....
> 
> the last times when we last discussed this issue, the 
> conclusion was that 
> an I-D that came in just after the deadline, and was an 
> active work item of 
> a working group, would likely have enough input from people 
> during the 
> meeting despite not being posted that the submitter would be 
> likely to want 
> to change it after the meeting. Thus, having his pre-meeting 
> thoughts show 
> up after the meeting as a "new" I-D could cause confusion, or even 
> embarassment.
> 
> Conversely, having the I-D submission be open as soon as the 
> meeting starts 
> was justified by arguing that as soon as the first WG session 
> is over, 
> people should be able to send in new I-Ds based on the work from that 
> session, without having to wait for the week to end before 
> they sent it.
> 
> Explainable?
> 
>                Harald
> 
> --On søndag, februar 27, 2005 19:42:08 -0800 Tom Pusateri 
> <[email-masked]> wrote:
> 
> > Thanks for the description.
> >
> > Can you explain why drafts received after the cut-off are discarded
> > as opposed to queued for processing after the restricted 
> period ends?
> >
> 
> 
> 
> 
>

---

From: Harald Tveit Alvestrand <[email-masked]>
Date: Mon, 28 Feb 2005 15:23:34 +0100

> are always accepted, even if they are not publshed immediately.

Thanks for voicing the opposing viewpoint!

This, like many other pieces of IETF process, is a tradeoff.... once we get 
the automatic submission mechanism in place, so that the "load on staff" 
argument goes away, we might try an IETF with no I-D blackout period, and 
see if that produces the howl of outrage from people who get asked to have 
an opinion on drafts submitted 5 min before the WG meeting that I expect.

I could be wrong, and find that WG chairs are effective in ruling out of 
order discussion on any late-submitted draft.... but human nature being 
what it is, I think that no I-D blackout WILL lead to people trying to get 
such late-updated drafts discussed in physical meetings.

Tradeoffs, always.

                     Harald

---

From: Paul Hoffman <[email-masked]>
Date: Mon, 28 Feb 2005 07:55:24 -0800

At 3:23 PM +0100 2/28/05, Harald Tveit Alvestrand wrote:
>I could be wrong, and find that WG chairs are effective in ruling 
>out of order discussion on any late-submitted draft.... but human 
>nature being what it is, I think that no I-D blackout WILL lead to 
>people trying to get such late-updated drafts discussed in physical 
>meetings.

Fewer people will complain about drafts just before the face-to-face 
than people who silently curse the current regime which sets 
artificial deadlines.

As a WG chair, I can simply say "you get a discussion slot for drafts 
that are submitted a week before the meeting; no draft, no slot".

--Paul Hoffman, Director
--VPN Consortium

---

From: Jeffrey Hutzelman <[email-masked]>
Date: Mon, 28 Feb 2005 14:59:48 -0500

On Monday, February 28, 2005 07:55:24 -0800 Paul Hoffman 
<[email-masked]> wrote:

> Fewer people will complain about drafts just before the face-to-face than
> people who silently curse the current regime which sets artificial
> deadlines.
>

I have to agree with Paul on this one.  In Kerberos, we generally have a 
couple of draft agendas on the list and maybe even some discussion prior to 
submitting the final agenda.  People who are following the list know what 
will be on the agenda and what won't, and there's little reason to block 
posting of updates to drafts that aren't on the agenda anyway.

To be honest, I'm beginning to question whether it's worthwhile to block 
updates to things that _are_ on the agenda.  Certainly it's desirable to 
give people time to read documents in advance of the meeting.  However, 
when a document is under active discussion, it's possible that by meeting 
time, the consensus differs significantly from the last-submitted version 
of the document.  The workaround is usually to post an updated document in 
some alternate, unofficial location, which IMHO is less desirable than an 
updated draft.

In fact, in writing this message I've realized that the policy reason for a 
draft submission deadline is to give people time to read documents before 
the IETF meeting by _pretending that no work happens between the deadline 
and the meeting_.  People aren't inconvenienced by having a new version of 
a draft appear a couple of days before the meeting; either they get to read 
the new draft in time, or they don't.  Either way, the _work_ has happened, 
and if that's inconvenient, I think that's just too bad.

I'm fine with a submission deadline and blackout period on the grounds that 
the Secretariat does not have the staff cycles to deal with submissions at 
all during that time, or that under the heavy load prior to the meeting, a 
certain amount of advance submission is required in order to insure a 
document gets published before the meeting.  I don't know about the former, 
but I don't think the latter is as true any more -- in the last couple of 
years, we've seen the submit-to-publish latency go _way_ down, even 
immediately prior to the meeting.

-- Jeff

---

From: Dean Willis <[email-masked]>
Date: Mon, 28 Feb 2005 17:25:47 -0600

>
> This, like many other pieces of IETF process, is a tradeoff.... once 
> we get the automatic submission mechanism in place, so that the "load 
> on staff" argument goes away, we might try an IETF with no I-D 
> blackout period, and see if that produces the howl of outrage from 
> people who get asked to have an opinion on drafts submitted 5 min 
> before the WG meeting that I expect.
>
> I could be wrong, and find that WG chairs are effective in ruling out 
> of order discussion on any late-submitted draft.... but human nature 
> being what it is, I think that no I-D blackout WILL lead to people 
> trying to get such late-updated drafts discussed in physical meetings.
>

You say "trying to get such late-updated drafts discussed in physical 
meetings" like it's always a bad thing! It's not, if managed carefully.

I have to confess. I've sometimes chaired working group meetings where 
we discussed drafts that were posted on my web site (rather than the 
IETF's) because the secretariat had dropped them, or because we had 
revved the draft in the barbof the night before the meeting, or revved 
the draft between the first session of the WG and the second session of 
the WG. Allison caught me once, but I think we went ahead and had the 
discussion anyhow. Other than that, I don't think anybody has ever 
complained, or even noticed and cared. This USUALLY happens with 
high-priority working group drafts that have a lot of push behind them 
and a high change-rate, so there's no doubt about the rough consensus.

I've also refused to grant floor time to drafts that had been posted on 
internet-drafts a month before the meeting but didn't have a critical 
mass of interest (i.e. rough consensus to discuss the draft in this 
meeting). Unless we were REALLY bored (never happens!), I can't imagine 
granting floor time to an individual draft that nobody except the 
author is excited about and that didn't get posted early.

That being said, the cut-off date does provide some level of 
encouragement to get the work in. I think of it as a sort of laxative 
for procrastinators. But I use it as a primarily "social guideline" 
rather than an absolute maxim.

Getting everything re-synchronized after the blackout period is a pain, 
and it would certainly be easier to deal with if we had continuous 
queueing instead of a blackout.

--
Dean