Subject: Is a new state needed in the WG states for drafts?

From: Henrik Levkowetz <[email-masked]>
Date: Wed, 03 Apr 2013 15:50:55 +0200

Hi,

During IETF 86, I sat down with Loa Andersson and Martin Vigoreux to
talk about how to best use the WG State tracking which is currently
available in the datatracker.

I think we sorted out most of the things they would like to do, but
there were at least one issue which remained, which may need some
tweaking to the states and code.

Refering to the state summary at
  https://datatracker.ietf.org/help/state/draft/stream-ietf/ :

The only WG state which exists before "Adopted by a WG"/"WG Document"
is "Call For Adoption By WG Issued".  But in the case of MPLS, there
can be a rather large number of documents which are under consideration
for adoption as WG documents, without an actual call for adoption having
been issued yet.

Considering that every WG can choose which, if any, of the states to use,
what do you think about adding another state which may be used before the
"Call For Adoption By WG Issued" state, named something like "Candidate
for WG Adoption"?

Best regards,

	Henrik
	(Datatracker Maintenance Hat)

---

From: Carsten Bormann <[email-masked]>
Date: Wed, 3 Apr 2013 16:00:46 +0200

On Apr 3, 2013, at 15:50, Henrik Levkowetz <[email-masked]> wrote:

> "Candidate

That is state that would be nice to record, e.g., when there has been in-room consensus to collect reviews and then issue the call for adoption.

Grüße, Carsten

---

From: Yoav Nir <[email-masked]>
Date: Wed, 3 Apr 2013 14:09:42 +0000

> That is state that would be nice to record, e.g., when there has been in-room consensus to collect reviews and then issue the call for adoption.

+1 

"Call issued" implies that a decision needs to be reached soon. It also implies that it's inappropriate to rev the doc, because people are answering a question about that version. This is only an implication - documents sometimes get revved even during LC, but it does imply a stable version.

So yes, marking something as under consideration (with a mail to the mailing list) would be great.

Yoav

---

From: Suresh Krishnan <[email-masked]>
Date: Wed, 3 Apr 2013 10:16:19 -0400

Hi Henrik,

> "Call For Adoption By WG Issued" state, named something like "Candidate

That sounds like a great idea. Personally, I would prefer something more
generic like "Chair is watching" (similar to AD is watching) as there
are more reasons to closely watch a document than just eying adoption.

Thanks
Suresh

---

From: "MORTON JR., ALFRED C (AL)" <[email-masked]>
Date: Wed, 3 Apr 2013 10:29:22 -0400

+1 for Chair is Watching, it's sufficiently nebulous.
Al

> -----Original Message-----
> From: [email-masked] [mailto:[email-masked]] On
> Behalf Of Suresh Krishnan
> Sent: Wednesday, April 03, 2013 10:16 AM
> To: Henrik Levkowetz
> Cc: WG Chairs
> Subject: Re: Is a new state needed in the WG states for drafts?
> 
> Hi Henrik,
>

---

From: Alexey Melnikov <[email-masked]>
Date: Wed, 3 Apr 2013 15:35:43 +0100

> are more reasons to closely watch a document than just eying adoption.

I like this as well.

---

From: Yaakov Stein <[email-masked]>
Date: Wed, 3 Apr 2013 14:46:23 +0000

Actually, why is the WG chair important here ?
Adopting a draft is a WG decision.

I think we could have a state called something like "has been presented to the WG",
and perhaps a dead-end state "WG not interested in adopting" 
to explain why IDs didn't make it to "Call For Adoption".

Y(J)S

---

From: Henrik Levkowetz <[email-masked]>
Date: Wed, 03 Apr 2013 16:47:50 +0200

Hi Suresh,

> are more reasons to closely watch a document than just eying adoption.

That sounds like another good pre-WG-document state to have.  I think we
could add both "Chair is watching" and "Candidate for WG Adoption" --
sometimes being specific about the latter is good.

Best regards,

	Henrik

---

From: "DRAGE, Keith (Keith)" <[email-masked]>
Date: Wed, 3 Apr 2013 14:51:32 +0000

What is the real problem here?

Is it really that we are missing a state, or are we just missing a potential many to one association with a charter milestone?

Regards

Keith

> Behalf Of Henrik Levkowetz
> Sent: 03 April 2013 14:51
> To: WG Chairs
> Subject: Is a new state needed in the WG states for drafts?
> 
> Hi,
>

---

From: Loa Andersson <[email-masked]>
Date: Wed, 03 Apr 2013 16:53:08 +0200

Henrik,

the time spent in Oralndo using the ID tracker for wg document were
well spent.

In thinking about we said and wished for there are a couple of thing
just looks more important than others

1. The grabbing state - when the discussions with neighbor wg is done
    and we all agree to which wg this document belongs, but before we at
    all decided that we want to go ahead with the document.
    Henrik call this "Candidate for WG Adoption". Suresh call it
    "Chair is watching", I can live with both, the only reason not to
    call "Chair is watching" is that is similar to "AD is watching" and
    "AD is watching" has somewhat of a negative flavor, often used as
    an escape state when "sending it back to the wg".
    I really like to have both states - but if I have to make the choice
    I'd prefer something that announces "this is our document, talk to
    the wg (chairs) if you think otherwise".
    The point I'm trying to make is that "WG chair watching" is too
    layed back, - yes I'm watching but I do not care that much. We
    could do "Being Prepared for WG Adoption", to indicate that we are
    putting a lot of effort. Then the WG's can decide how much process
    is needed in that state.

2. The dates that gets into the log if I update tags only - just now
    it seems that the date is the date when the latest state changed
    happened.

3. The possibility for chairs (modulo AD support) to delegate
    "chair-like" rights to wg secretaries.

4. The new tag "New ID needed" (when cleared) bumps the document into
    "AD is watching", well I hope they do, but this should really be
    "Chair is Watching" or better "Waiting for WG chair go aheaad".

/Loa

-- 

Loa Andersson                        email: [email-masked]
Senior MPLS Expert                          [email-masked]
Huawei Technologies (consultant)     phone: +46 739 81 21 64

---

From: Ted Lemon <[email-masked]>
Date: Wed, 3 Apr 2013 14:55:20 +0000

> to explain why IDs didn't make it to "Call For Adoption".

Unfortunately I don't think that works, because until a draft has been adopted it's an individual submission, and hence subject to working group shopping.  I suppose having a list of the working groups to which it has been shopped in the history might be useful... :)

---

From: Henrik Levkowetz <[email-masked]>
Date: Wed, 03 Apr 2013 17:04:44 +0200

Hi Loa,

>     putting a lot of effort. Then the WG's can decide how much process

Yes.  I think this is desirable, and needs discussion.

>     it seems that the date is the date when the latest state changed

This one I consider a bug -- I don't think we need to discuss it :-)

>     "chair-like" rights to wg secretaries.

That should already be in place -- see my separate mail about assigning
WG delegates -- there's already a tab in the chair view of a WG's page
to do that.

>     "Chair is Watching" or better "Waiting for WG chair go aheaad".

Also a bug, I think -- I was going to look at the code to find out why
it was doing that.

Best regards,

	Henrik

---

From: Yoav Nir <[email-masked]>
Date: Wed, 3 Apr 2013 15:06:44 +0000

Sometimes a draft presents a new idea to the group (within the general stuff that the group is working on), but there still isn't a milestone in the charter.

In that case, the chairs usually ask a twofold question: (1) Do we want to work on FOO?, and (2) Is draft-snooki-ipv8m-foo a good starting point?

In that case it would be good to be able to mark the draft.

The other case is when FOO is already on the charter, and we are considering draft-snooki as a solution, in which case the only question is (2).

Either way marking the draft as "chair is watching" or "under consideration" sends a signal to the authors to stop shopping around (for now), and to other chairs to not call for this draft's adoption without first talking to the working group whose chair has set the state.

Yoav

On Apr 3, 2013, at 5:51 PM, "DRAGE, Keith (Keith)" <[email-masked]>
 wrote:

> Email secured by Check Point

---

From: Yaakov Stein <[email-masked]>
Date: Wed, 3 Apr 2013 15:08:29 +0000

Why do you care if the same draft appears as "presented" in >1 WG ?

The problem I have is knowing if a given draft is known to a given WG,
if it has been discussed, and thereafter if it is being considered or not.

Y(J)S

---

From: Henrik Levkowetz <[email-masked]>
Date: Wed, 03 Apr 2013 17:15:32 +0200

Hi Yaakov,

> if it has been discussed, and thereafter if it is being considered or not.

Maybe the issue about your proposal is that we don't have per-WG states
for drafts, which would be needed in order to keep a 'WG foo isn't interested'
state visible when another WG chair has changed the state to 'Candidate for
WG Adoption'.

The document history will show who set a given state, but the state
indication will only show one current state, not one per WG.

Using the document history, it's perfectly possible to see that chair  Foo
set 'Candidate for WG Adoption' at some date, then removed it later (if
the WG determined it wasn't interested), possibly followed by other similar
sequences for other WGs.

Best regards,

	Henrik

---

From: "Howard, Lee" <[email-masked]>
Date: Wed, 3 Apr 2013 12:01:34 -0400

>sometimes being specific about the latter is good.

I don't understand what "Chair is watching" means.
"Presented to WG" doesn't mean much.  It was discussed on list?  It was
discussed at a meeting?  Provides no information about document
status/state.
"Candidate for WG Adoption" sounds a little prejudicial; the WG chair has
already decided this document is a candidate.

Other than "Active" or "Expired," I don't know what state exists prior to
adoption.  Until the WG agrees that it is working on a document, it's an
individual submission.

Lee

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From: Behcet Sarikaya <[email-masked]>
Date: Wed, 3 Apr 2013 11:05:16 -0500

You mean
Chairs are watching?

Behcet

---

From: Michael Richardson <[email-masked]>
Date: Wed, 03 Apr 2013 12:09:34 -0400

>>>>> "Keith" == Keith  <DRAGE> writes:
    Keith> What is the real problem here?

    Keith> Is it really that we are missing a state, or are we just
    Keith> missing a potential many to one association with a charter
    Keith> milestone? 

yes, that would also work: it additional work, and it also requires that
the milestones be presented clearly in the database.  I would suggest
that this is a good "step 2".

I like the "chair is watching", and I'd like the bit to be three-stated
having also "chair is ignoring".

Why? Right now we have the "related Documents" test which looks for the 
one WG name in the document title and shows it.  Apparently looking for
more than one became a problem once we had "core" as WG name.

What I'd like to be able to do with "Chair is watching" is to clearly
have the chair able to acknowledge a document (regardless of name) as
belonging on the list.

I would like the "chair is ignoring" for a document which would
otherwise have shown up in Related Documents, but the WG has looked at
it, and decided it is not relevant.  

Things with neither watching nor ignoring could continue to use the WG
name in document title process.

-- 
Michael Richardson <[email-masked]>, Sandelman Software Works

---

From: Russ Housley <[email-masked]>
Date: Wed, 3 Apr 2013 12:12:14 -0400

This seems like a good addition to me.

Russ

---

From: "Howard, Lee" <[email-masked]>
Date: Wed, 3 Apr 2013 12:31:16 -0400

>have the chair able to acknowledge a document (regardless of name) as

I like this--I would like to be able to use "Related Documents" as a list
of non-WG documents that may be discussed at a meeting, or which WG
participants may find interesting or informative reading.
I'm not sure a new state is the right mechanism for that, if a chair could
add recommended reading.  Or, chair can ask authors to rename their
documents "draft-lastname-wg-subject-of-draft" which for really
interesting drafts might have to be
"draft-lastname-wgfoo-wgbar-wgbaz-subject-of-draft".

Lee

---

From: "Gunter Van de Velde (gvandeve)" <[email-masked]>
Date: Wed, 3 Apr 2013 16:49:16 +0000

What is issue with what is there is right now? I am 100% happy in the process right now.

I manage a WG with pretty light activity.

For the moment I do not need extra document state .
It is either individual document or it is accepted as WG document.

I see no reason for a document status to be somewhere in between in the twilight zone. 
My view is to have 'no' WG chair to show formal preference for a document to become WG document 
or not (as that is what imho this intermediate state could result towards).

G/

-----Original Message-----
From: [email-masked] [mailto:[email-masked]] On Behalf Of Henrik Levkowetz
Sent: 03 April 2013 16:48
To: Suresh Krishnan
Cc: WG Chairs
Subject: Re: Is a new state needed in the WG states for drafts?

Hi Suresh,

On 2013-04-03 16:16 Suresh Krishnan said:
>> Considering that every WG can choose which, if any, of the states to 
>> use, what do you think about adding another state which may be used 
>> before the "Call For Adoption By WG Issued" state, named something 
>> like "Candidate for WG Adoption"?
> 
> That sounds like a great idea. Personally, I would prefer something 
> more generic like "Chair is watching" (similar to AD is watching) as 
> there are more reasons to closely watch a document than just eying adoption.

That sounds like another good pre-WG-document state to have.  I think we could add both "Chair is watching" and "Candidate for WG Adoption" -- sometimes being specific about the latter is good.

Best regards,

	Henrik

---

From: Michael Richardson <[email-masked]>
Date: Wed, 03 Apr 2013 13:07:47 -0400

>>>>> "Howard," == Howard, Lee <[email-masked]> writes:

    Howard> I like this--I would like to be able to use "Related Documents" as a list
    Howard> of non-WG documents that may be discussed at a meeting, or which WG
    Howard> participants may find interesting or informative reading.
    Howard> I'm not sure a new state is the right mechanism for that, if a chair could
    Howard> add recommended reading.  Or, chair can ask authors to rename their
    Howard> documents "draft-lastname-wg-subject-of-draft" which for really
    Howard> interesting drafts might have to be
    Howard> "draft-lastname-wgfoo-wgbar-wgbaz-subject-of-draft".

The first problem with the wgfoo-wgbar-wgbaz is that it turns out that it's
hard to actually have bar and baz found and presented.

The second problem is that the control over related documents is now
under the control of the document submitters, not the WG (in the form of
WG chairs).

I like wgfoo-wgbar-wgbaz as a way to bring a document to the attention
of the WG chair, who then clicks on the "watch" (or whatever verb we
conclude makes most sense).   Maybe "considering" is the right verb.

We need WG is ignoring only if we continue to make the "Related
Documents" area a free-for-all.  I think that we probably should do
that, as I think that I am happy with that aspect of openness.

-- 
]               Never tell me the odds!                 | ipv6 mesh networks [ 
]   Michael Richardson, Sandelman Software Works        | network architect  [ 
]     [email-masked]  http://www.sandelman.ca/        |   ruby on rails    [

---

From: "Black, David" <[email-masked]>
Date: Wed, 3 Apr 2013 14:05:32 -0400

+1

Also, for individual submission drafts that have the WG name embedded,
e.g., draft-person-wgfoo-something-interesting, it seems worthwhile to
enable the named WG, i.e., wgfoo, but *only* wgfoo, to record a decision
that the WG has looked at the draft and is not interested,
e.g., "No WG Interest".

That may encourages the draft authors to continue shopping the draft
by renaming it, e.g., to draft-wgbar-something-interesting.  While honest
(by comparison to leaving the name of a no-longer-interested WG in the
draft name), it's also a bit of an obfuscation, and invites subterfuge,
e.g., if the rename is to draft-wgbar-something-else, tracking down
what it replaced may not be easy.

Thanks,
--David

> From: [email-masked] [mailto:[email-masked]] On Behalf
> Of Russ Housley
> Sent: Wednesday, April 03, 2013 12:12 PM
> To: Henrik Levkowetz
> Cc: WG Chairs

---

From: "Randy Presuhn" <[email-masked]>
Date: Wed, 3 Apr 2013 11:54:10 -0700

Hi -

> From: "Black, David" <[email-masked]>
...
> that the WG has looked at the draft and is not interested,

Since it's not always a case of "no" interest, if we go this route,
I'd suggest "Insufficient WG Interest".

Randy

---

From: "Black, David" <[email-masked]>
Date: Wed, 3 Apr 2013 14:59:26 -0400

WFM, Thanks, --David

---

From: Pete Resnick <[email-masked]>
Date: Wed, 3 Apr 2013 14:12:53 -0500

> "Call For Adoption By WG Issued" state, named something like "Candidate

Given the discussion thus far, this now seems like an exceedingly *bad* 
idea to me. A document can be a candidate for adoption in several WGs at 
the same time, and AFAICT there is no way to represent that with a 
single state, since a document entering the WG tracker can only have a 
single WG associated with it. This is exactly why Robert finally beat 
the ADs about using the "AD is Watching" state for simply indicating 
that a document is at the beginning of the process and you are keeping 
an eye on it: It stays with you from then on until some other AD picks 
up the document or you mark it as DEAD, which people don't like to do 
because it looks bad.

It seems to me that the suggestion to revamp the "Related Documents" 
list is really what is needed. People have the personal tracker to track 
what documents they are interested in. What you want is for the WG to be 
able to have its own "personal tracker" so that other people can see 
what documents the WG is interested in. They can be documents from other 
WGs, or documents that are proposed for adoption, or whatever else the 
WG wants to use that list for.

It seems to me that you are trying to use the hammer of "WG document 
state" to drive in this screw. Put down the hammer. Find a screwdriver. 
You're only going to end up with a mashed up screw that doesn't hold 
very well.

pr

-- 
Pete Resnick<http://www.qualcomm.com/~presnick/>
Qualcomm Technologies, Inc. - +1 (858)651-4478

---

From: Henrik Levkowetz <[email-masked]>
Date: Wed, 03 Apr 2013 23:00:59 +0200

Hi Pete,

(and also Gunter, see the last few paragraph of mine below regarding the
number of potential WG documents the MPLS WG has to deal with)

A couple of points which I'd like to mention in reply to Pete's comments,
which you may not have realized:

On 2013-04-03 21:12 Pete Resnick said the following:
> single WG associated with it.

1. Yes, but there may be a point to this, which I don't think has been mentioned
this time around, but was taken up when draft-ietf-proto-wgdocument-states
which became RFC 6174 was discussed:  Being able to set a state on a non-WG
document can work as a flag, telling other WG chairs that one group is already
looking at a document from some point of view, so that they will start by talking
to the chairs that have so marked it, instead of starting a parallel discussion
in their own WG without knowledge that a draft is already under consideration
elsewhere.

> This is exactly why Robert finally beat 

It could be that the cases aren't parallel...

> WG wants to use that list for.

2. Some more data here:  The MPLS working group has currently *almost 50*
active related documents.  With the additional state, as proposed, the
chairs would be able to signal which of these were actually under consideration
for adoption at any given time.  As far as I can tell, this meshes very well
with other uses of the WG document states.

The only effect of depriving the working group of a "Candidate for WG Adoption"
state is that they will be using the current "Call For Adoption By WG Issued"
state to signal the same thing, but with a larger chance of miscommunication
because it doesn't clearly say what they want to indicate.

> You're only going to end up with a mashed up screw that doesn't hold 

While the hammer/screw analogy can often be used to dissuade people from doing
silly things, I actually don't think it's applicable here, in view of my point
1. above.

Best regards,

	Henrik

---

From: Dave Crocker <[email-masked]>
Date: Wed, 3 Apr 2013 14:05:20 -0700

Suresh's note suggests that the state could apply at various times throughout the eg life of the doc.

/d

--
Dave Crocker
bbiw.net

via mobile

-----Original Message-----
From: Suresh Krishnan <[email-masked]>
To: Henrik Levkowetz <[email-masked]>
Cc: WG Chairs <[email-masked]>
Sent: Wed, 03 Apr 2013 7:18 AM
Subject: Re: Is a new state needed in the WG states for drafts?

Hi Henrik,

Thanks
Suresh

---

From: Henrik Levkowetz <[email-masked]>
Date: Wed, 03 Apr 2013 23:05:52 +0200

Hi David,

> that the WG has looked at the draft and is not interested,

I think this could an excellent addition to the proposal.  It of course means
that more code is needed, not only an additional state entry in the state
list, but that's fine.

> what it replaced may not be easy.

True.  But I think this could still be a good idea.

Best regards,

	Henrik

---

From: "DRAGE, Keith (Keith)" <[email-masked]>
Date: Wed, 3 Apr 2013 22:23:02 +0000

I believe I concur.

To me, the state should identify the degree of progress of the document, and these do not seem to be progress.

Rather there seems to be a need to retain extractable information about the document and the relationship to the working group, e.g. document considered within the scope of a working group, document considered to be within the scope of working group charter milestone. Note that these relationships could possibly be many to many.

At some point an identified relationship could be removed, and possibly either the addition or removal could be accompanied by a note indicating the reasons for the association in the first place, or for its removal. These would be listed with the history of the document.

Keith

> Behalf Of Pete Resnick
> Sent: 03 April 2013 20:13
> To: Henrik Levkowetz
> Cc: WG Chairs

---

From: Michael Richardson <[email-masked]>
Date: Wed, 03 Apr 2013 20:19:25 -0400

>>>>> "Pete" == Pete Resnick <[email-masked]> writes:
    Pete> Given the discussion thus far, this now seems like an
    Pete> exceedingly *bad* idea 
    Pete> to me. A document can be a candidate for adoption in several
    Pete> WGs at the same 
    Pete> time, and AFAICT there is no way to represent that with a
    Pete> single state, since 

I think that it's not a bad idea.
It may be a useless idea, but I don't think it's harmful. 
It's very cheap, literally, I think, one row in a table. While I think
that some code changes will be made, they are optional.

Don't let perfect get in the way of good enough.

If good enough isn't good enough, then we can do version 2 at larger
software effort.    It's software afterall.

---

From: Loa Andersson <[email-masked]>
Date: Thu, 04 Apr 2013 06:17:06 +0200

All,

I agree with Michael that this is not a bad idea.

In my case it is very useful, to the point where if I can't
reflect what happens to a document before it is formally
adopted as a working group document the use of the ID tracker
is not beneficial. We'll go back and managed the the spreadsheet
as we don't up to mow. Much clearer and pregnant info; but it requires
a manual intervention each time we do anything.

"Candidate Document for WG" (or what ever we call it) does not reflect a
preference by the wg chairs; it reflects the fact that the authors of
a document has told the wg chairs the the document is ready to become a
working group document and that the wg (chairs) has committed to go
through the steps to see if there is consensus in the working group
to make it a wg doc.

For me there is several steps in this process
1. the doc is reviewed by review team members (and chair(s))
2. the comment from this review is resolved and it is verified that
    the comments are satisfactorily addressed.
3. we do an IPR poll
4. we do a poll to see if we have rough consensus to  adopt it as
    a working group document

Step 4 above reflect "Call for working group adoption issued". I need
the state to reflect the pre-poll activities. I don't understand why
this is bad or what harm if could do if it optional.

"WG Chair watching" I'd like to use when there seems to be a dropping
interest by authors to do what they once committed to.

/Loa

--