Subject: working group documents and cut-off dates

From: Loa Andersson <[email-masked]>
Date: Tue, 04 Sep 2007 17:35:25 +0200

All,

as we now are in the rather relaxed period between two meetings
I'd like to bring something up around the cut-off dates.

Publishing a version of an ID with a version number that is
higher than zero, is possible all the way up to the 2nd
cut-off date. Regardless whether it is and individual
contribution or a working group document.

Publishing a -00 version of an individual contribution is
not possible after the first cut-off date.

Neither is possible to publish a -00 version of a working
group document.

Now if I'm between cut-off date 1 and 2, it is possible to
publish a -03 version of a an individual draft, but not a
-00 version of a working group draft, even though the only
difference in the document is the filename.

This simply don't make sense to me.

In general documents where there is a working group
rough consensus to accept them as wg documents, and
should become -00 version of a wg document, are more
mature than higher order versions where there is no
no such rough consensus.

Would it be possible to accept new wg docs all the way
up to the 2nd cut-off date?

/Loa

PS

This is not a very big problem, wg chairs simply tell authors
to post a new version of the individual contribution, and
then tell the wg "this doc didn't make the cut-off date; please
consider it as if it were a wg doc"

-- 
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]

This email was Anti Virus checked by Astaro Security Gateway. http://www.astaro.com

---

From: "Randy Presuhn" <[email-masked]>
Date: Tue, 4 Sep 2007 19:17:27 -0700

Hi -

> From: "Loa Andersson" <[email-masked]>
> To: "Working Group Chairs" <[email-masked]>
> Sent: Tuesday, September 04, 2007 8:35 AM
> Subject: working group documents and cut-off dates
...
> consider it as if it were a wg doc"
...

Unless something has changed since I last read RFC 2418,
if the WG chairs say an i-d is a WG document, it *is* a WG
document, regardless of its name.

Re-naming WG documents to include the WG name is simply
for convenience.  (Please correct me citing RFC chapter and
verse if I got this wrong.)

Randy

---

From: Loa Andersson <[email-masked]>
Date: Wed, 05 Sep 2007 09:28:35 +0200

Randy,

> verse if I got this wrong.)

yes you are right, which makes stopping us from renaming
an existing doc to -00 version working group doc even
less understandable

naming a doc draft-ietf-wg- is convenient, as some of the
ietf tools works kind of automatic if we do

/Loa

-- 
Loa Andersson

---

From: Spencer Dawkins <[email-masked]>
Date: Wed, 05 Sep 2007 16:53:19 +0800

There are things that make sense about the way we name and rename drafts, 
but not everything makes sense.

As pointed out - it's a convenience to rename drafts, but since it's 
optional, you really can't believe the names - no one has mentioned the 
"working group closing so now we'll finish the draft as an individual 
submission without changing the name" trick.

If we're going to rename drafts, it seems like we should make that easier in 
both directions.

Spencer

---

From: Loa Andersson <[email-masked]>
Date: Wed, 05 Sep 2007 12:21:30 +0200

Spencer and all,

what I try to say here is only that if a working group has
as practice to rename a document when accepting it as a
working group document, there is no reason to stop the
publishing of that document just because we are between
cut off date 1 and 2.

/Loa

Spencer Dawkins wrote:
> There are things that make sense about the way we name and rename
> drafts, but not everything makes sense.
> 
> If we're going to rename drafts, it seems like we should make that
> easier in both directions.
> 
> Spencer
> 
> 
>> Randy,
>>
>> Randy Presuhn wrote:
>>> Hi -
>>>

-- 
Loa Andersson

---

From: Spencer Dawkins <[email-masked]>
Date: Wed, 05 Sep 2007 21:36:39 +0800

> publishing of that document just because we are between

I agree. My apologies if that wasn't clear.

Since we think renaming documents is useful, and since I've recently seen 
working groups who (instead of saying "rename it and I'll announce it as a 
WG draft") choose not to change the name because the cutoff date for 00s has 
passed, the nn->00 cutoff restriction seems actively counterproductive, in 
at least some cases.

But I AM interested in one point that Loa made in this followup - Steve Coya 
(remember Steve?) made the point about how we had flexibility about whether 
to rename or not in maybe 15 New WG Chair training sessions that I know of, 
and when I took over the training sessions from Margaret, I always carefully 
pointed out that renaming is optional, until way too many people told me 
that they don't read most "individual" drafts (based on seeing that the file 
name looked "individual", or not).

So anyone whose working group doesn't rename is flying under the radar of 
people who actually look at the ID announcements, including current IAB and 
IESG members (who are WAY too busy to try to check the WG home page to see 
whether each draft is really a WG draft - as Andy said, that's the only way 
to know for sure).

Does anyone actually USE this flexibility? Or are 99.9 percent of the drafts 
named using this convention, but we can't assume the convention in tool 
design, etc. because of the tiny percentage of drafts that don't?

Spencer

---

From: Cullen Jennings <[email-masked]>
Date: Wed, 5 Sep 2007 11:12:04 -0700

Logically speaking, I agree this makes no sense - but practically I  
find it useful. When a WG adopts a document, a lot more people read  
it and often they are reading it for the first time. It also takes  
longer to read the first time than on subsequent reviews. I don't  
know about other areas but RAI creates a lot of reading for most the  
folks in it - in the past year or two, there have been two IETF where  
given the publication delay on drafts and the alignment with holidays  
and travel to IETF, we had less than 5 business days to review a very  
large number of 01 drafts and not really all that long to review all  
the drafts. I think the new web based submission tool will cut the  
publication delay but I still like having more time to review the  
newly adopted WG documents.

Just my 2 cents - probably any scheme can be made to work as long as  
people know what to plan for. I think the important part is trying to  
decide if we have the right amount of time to read and comment on  
drafts before the meeting.

---

From: Dean Willis <[email-masked]>
Date: Fri, 7 Sep 2007 12:58:41 -0500

On Sep 5, 2007, at 8:36 AM, Spencer Dawkins wrote:

> So anyone whose working group doesn't rename is flying under the  
> radar of people who actually look at the ID announcements,  
> including current IAB and IESG members (who are WAY too busy to try  
> to check the WG home page to see whether each draft is really a WG  
> draft - as Andy said, that's the only way to know for sure).
>
> Does anyone actually USE this flexibility? Or are 99.9 percent of  
> the drafts named using this convention, but we can't assume the  
> convention in tool design, etc. because of the tiny percentage of  
> drafts that don't?
>

SIP has had a number of drafts that renamed to wg-00 and immediately  
went to the IESG. Of course, they were wg-27 or so before they got  
past the IESG, so don't assume we're doing anything right.

We've also had many adopted-as-WG drafts resubmitted in their  
individual-name format, sometimes before several versions, before  
somebody got around to renaming them as -sip-. The most common reason  
for NOT renaming is, as you might guess, missing the -00 cutoff date.  
I'd guess this happens more than 50% of the time when a draft is  
transiting from individual to WG.

It's kind of like the preapproval process for new WG drafts. If I  
took this seriously, I'd just "preapprove" a WG draft for every  
milestone that doesn't already have a WG draft attached before every  
IETF. Like great works of art, new WG drafts appear when they appear  
(which may be before they're ready), not because they're scheduled to  
appear.

--
Dean

---

From: Sam Hartman <[email-masked]>
Date: Fri, 07 Sep 2007 14:32:22 -0400

krb-wg has had several WG drafts approved still under their individual
names.

---

From: Jeffrey Hutzelman <[email-masked]>
Date: Mon, 10 Sep 2007 17:31:09 -0400

> krb-wg has had several WG drafts approved still under their individual

Yes, we have.  We also have several drafts which currently have individual 
names but have been recently adopted as WG items and will likely be renamed 
with the next version, assuming those are submitted by the -00 cutoff.  If 
not, they'll probably keep their current names for another cycle.

It seems to me that the goal of not introducing new documents too close to 
an IETF meeting is best met by not introducing new documents too close to 
an IETF meeting, and _not_ by restricting when existing documents can be 
renamed.  If an existing document is renamed to draft-ietf-wg-* and the WG 
chair approves the filename, that document ought not to be treated as an 
initial version.

-- Jeff

---

From: "DRAGE, Keith \(Keith\)" <[email-masked]>
Date: Tue, 11 Sep 2007 10:25:59 +0200

I think our goal is best met by not making the starting the chain of
decision that something should be a working group document within 3
weeks of a meeting.

My guess is that there is no real excuse why anybody needs the exception
we are talking about except that they left everything to the last minute
to do their draft submissions.

Rapid churn on the contents of documents doesn't happen at the -00
version, it happens in the later versions.

Regards

Keith 

> -----Original Message-----
> From: Jeffrey Hutzelman [mailto:[email-masked]] 
> Sent: Monday, September 10, 2007 10:31 PM
> To: Sam Hartman; Dean Willis
> Cc: Working Group Chairs
> Subject: Re: working group documents and cut-off dates
> 
> 
> 
> Yes, we have.  We also have several drafts which currently 
> have individual names but have been recently adopted as WG 
> items and will likely be renamed with the next version, 
> assuming those are submitted by the -00 cutoff.  If not, 
> they'll probably keep their current names for another cycle.
> 
> It seems to me that the goal of not introducing new documents 
> too close to an IETF meeting is best met by not introducing 
> new documents too close to an IETF meeting, and _not_ by 
> restricting when existing documents can be renamed.  If an 
> existing document is renamed to draft-ietf-wg-* and the WG 
> chair approves the filename, that document ought not to be 
> treated as an initial version.
> 
> -- Jeff
> 
>

---

From: Jeffrey Hutzelman <[email-masked]>
Date: Tue, 11 Sep 2007 10:34:08 -0400 (EDT)

> version, it happens in the later versions.

You mean, it doesn't happen at the _initial_ version, which under the
current system is not the same thing, since any renaming of a document
resets the version.  Remember that adoption as a WG document does not
happen at a fixed point in a document's life cycle.  Some WG's do this
very early, some very late when the document is almost mature, and some do
it somewhere in between, such as when it is clear the direction taken by
that document is the one the WG wishes to pursue.

In any event, plesae remember the nature of the relationship here.
Document authors are not powerless supplicants begging the IETF to take
their documents and subject to whatever whimsical rules we choose to
invent.  They are volunteers doing a time-consuming job so that the work
of the IETF and its working groups can proceed.  If a document author is
late with a document, even chronically so, or if an author or WG tends to
be bursty, doing most of his/her/its work just before IETF meetings,
that's an issue to address.  However, it makes no sense to try to "punish"
that author or WG by artificially delaying the work of the IETF.  That's
like your boss "punishing" you for missing a deadline by not letting you
do any work on that project for three weeks -- it doesn't harm you; it
just makes the project even later.

-- Jeff

---

From: Cullen Jennings <[email-masked]>
Date: Wed, 12 Sep 2007 22:03:04 -0700

On Sep 10, 2007, at 2:31 PM, Jeffrey Hutzelman wrote:

> It seems to me that the goal of not introducing new documents too  
> close to an IETF meeting is best met by not introducing new  
> documents too close to an IETF meeting, and _not_ by restricting  
> when existing documents can be renamed.  If an existing document is  
> renamed to draft-ietf-wg-* and the WG chair approves the filename,  
> that document ought not to be treated as an initial version.

Nicely put - of course I agree.

---

From: "James M. Polk" <[email-masked]>
Date: Thu, 13 Sep 2007 15:04:26 -0500

>Nicely put - of course I agree.

ditto, under the guise of authors not making substantial changes to 
what the WG agreed would become the WG item in the first place.

I think -00s should just be renamed versions of the last individual 
version, so the WG knows the -00 is exactly what they agreed to.

---

From: "Brian Rosen" <[email-masked]>
Date: Thu, 13 Sep 2007 16:16:06 -0400

I can get behind this.  It's something I don't think we currently allow:
simply changing the name of an EXISTING document.

Then we get what we actually agree to: making a specific document a working
group document.  As pointed out, we can do that without changing the name,
but most working group documents are in fact named draft-ietf-...
If we can change the name of a document to something else, and have the tool
support to show what we did, I think that addresses the issue quite nicely.

Brian

> From: James M. Polk [mailto:[email-masked]]
> Sent: Thursday, September 13, 2007 4:04 PM
> To: Cullen Jennings; Jeffrey Hutzelman
> Cc: Working Group Chairs

---

From: "DRAGE, Keith \(Keith\)" <[email-masked]>
Date: Tue, 18 Sep 2007 15:50:03 +0200

I guess I just suffer frustration here. It takes longer than it ought to
get the milestones approved, and then it seems impossible to get
editor's to rev the document even if they are not making technical
changes, in order to correspond to those milestones with a working group
title.

No matter what we make the deadlines, there will always be a significant
set of editors that fail to meet them, and for which we have to create
exceptions.

The ideal is that we have all working group documents clearly
identifiable and available two weeks before the meeting in order to
allow people to read them.

Currently the procedures for -00 versions mean an additional round of
checking that forces delay. Unless we can reduce that checking time for
-00 down to zero (and it always seems to take longer to get
draft-ietf-xxx-00 documents out even when the WG chairs have
preapproved) then there still needs to be a lead time on the -00 version
against any other version.

Regards

Keith

> Sent: Tuesday, September 11, 2007 3:34 PM
> To: DRAGE, Keith (Keith)
> Cc: Sam Hartman; Dean Willis; Working Group Chairs
> Subject: RE: working group documents and cut-off dates
> 
> > My guess is that there is no real excuse why anybody needs the 
> > exception we are talking about except that they left 
> everything to the 
> > last minute to do their draft submissions.
> >
> You mean, it doesn't happen at the _initial_ version, which 
> under the current system is not the same thing, since any 
> renaming of a document resets the version.  Remember that 
> adoption as a WG document does not happen at a fixed point in 
> a document's life cycle.  Some WG's do this very early, some 
> very late when the document is almost mature, and some do it 
> somewhere in between, such as when it is clear the direction 
> taken by that document is the one the WG wishes to pursue.
> 
> Document authors are not powerless supplicants begging the 
> IETF to take their documents and subject to whatever 
> whimsical rules we choose to invent.  They are volunteers 
> doing a time-consuming job so that the work of the IETF and 
> its working groups can proceed.  If a document author is late 
> with a document, even chronically so, or if an author or WG 
> tends to be bursty, doing most of his/her/its work just 
> before IETF meetings, that's an issue to address.  However, 
> it makes no sense to try to "punish"
> that author or WG by artificially delaying the work of the 
> IETF.  That's like your boss "punishing" you for missing a 
> deadline by not letting you do any work on that project for 
> three weeks -- it doesn't harm you; it just makes the project 
> even later.
> 
> -- Jeff
> 
>