Subject: Announcing Internet Drafts when they've been adopted by an IETF working group

From: Spencer Dawkins at IETF <[email-masked]>
Date: Thu, 6 Dec 2018 07:29:26 -0600

Dear IETF Working Group Chairs,

The IESG has been talking about ways to make it easier for people to notice
that work is being taken up in an IETF working group, when those people are
not already participating in that working group. Our goal is to improve
visibility to IETF participants in other working groups and other areas, to
other SDOs, and, really, to anyone who is curious for any reason about
"what the IETF is doing"[*].

We plan to start a new mailing list that looks a lot like
https://www.ietf.org/mailman/listinfo/i-d-announce, but includes ONLY draft
announcements where

- the draft filename begins with "draft-ietf", indicating that the draft is
being processed in the IETF stream, and
- the version number for this draft announcement is -00

The idea is that this list screens out individual drafts, that haven't been
adopted by an IETF working group yet (so, is less "noisy" than
https://www.ietf.org/mailman/listinfo/i-d-announce), tells you that "an
IETF working group is taking this draft seriously enough to adopt it", and
makes this work visible before an IETF Last Call is issued, which is
usually our trigger for cross-working group and cross-area awareness, but
happens late in the specification development timeline, so major issues are
often surprises.

We're asking for your help on these points.

IETF working groups have a great deal of freedom about when they choose to
adopt an Internet Draft. If your working group adopts an Internet Draft
REALLY early, before the working group has focused on the text, or REALLY
late (just before requesting publication), this announcement won't be as
helpful for people interested in your working group's output. If that's
likely to cause disruptions for your working group, please let us know
(either on this mailing list, or at iesg@ietf,org).

We know that mailing lists are not the only way that we communicate with
the rest of the world - for instance, there exist Twitter feeds for RFC and
I-D announcements. We'd like for this information to be broadly helpful, so
if there are ways that you know would help people become aware of your
working group's work, please let Greg Woods at ISOC know - he is helping
the IESG on this.

We're always interested in feedback, so if there's something we're missing
or getting wrong, please let us know that, too!

Thanks,

Spencer Dawkins, for the IESG

[*] we've also been talking with the stream managers for the IRTF, IAB, and
Independent streams about this, and they may also create a similar feed for
work that's being taken up in those streams, but the IESG is only doing
this for the IETF stream.

---

From: "Andrew G. Malis" <[email-masked]>
Date: Thu, 6 Dec 2018 10:13:31 -0500

Spencer,

Good idea. We may wish to use a set of short liaisons to partner SDOs to
announce the list once it's in operation. We might also want to recommend
to our liaison managers that they join the list, if they're not already on
i-d-announce. Out of curiosity, has the IESG coordinated this with the IAB?

Cheers,
Andy

On Thu, Dec 6, 2018 at 8:29 AM Spencer Dawkins at IETF <
[email-masked]> wrote:

> The IESG has been talking about ways to make it easier for people to
> notice that work is being taken up in an IETF working group, when those
> people are not already participating in that working group. Our goal is to
> improve visibility to IETF participants in other working groups and other
> areas, to other SDOs, and, really, to anyone who is curious for any reason
> about "what the IETF is doing"[*].
>
> https://www.ietf.org/mailman/listinfo/i-d-announce, but includes ONLY
> draft announcements where
>
> - the draft filename begins with "draft-ietf", indicating that the draft
> is being processed in the IETF stream, and
> The idea is that this list screens out individual drafts, that haven't
> been adopted by an IETF working group yet (so, is less "noisy" than
> (either on this mailing list, or at iesg@ietf,org)..
>
> [*] we've also been talking with the stream managers for the IRTF, IAB,
> and Independent streams about this, and they may also create a similar feed
> for work that's being taken up in those streams, but the IESG is only doing

---

From: Julien Meuric <[email-masked]>
Date: Thu, 6 Dec 2018 16:33:53 +0100

Hi Spencer,

Thanks for requesting feedback.

>From my experience (mainly from the Routing Area), the millage may vary
not only between WGs, but also on a per item basis. Sometimes, the
adoption of a given I-D may be delayed until it reaches a certain level
of maturity; while some other time, in the same WG, another I-D may be
adopted with a loose content to have the WG commit on the corresponding
topic. This case-by-case policy can make it cumbersome to track from the
outside without the per-I-D context.

However, enhancing the advertisement of adopted I-Ds will emphasize the
difference with individual documents, which often remains fuzzy to the
outside world. This is an improvement with respect to the situation
where we stand right now. Besides, the cross-WG/cross-area benefit is
obvious. As a result, even if not perfect, this a step forward.

Regards,

Julien

On 06/12/2018 14:29, Spencer Dawkins at IETF wrote:
> notice that work is being taken up in an IETF working group, when
> those people are not already participating in that working group. Our
> goal is to improve visibility to IETF participants in other working
> groups and other areas, to other SDOs, and, really, to anyone who is
> curious for any reason about "what the IETF is doing"[*].
>
> We plan to start a new mailing list that looks a lot
> like https://www.ietf.org/mailman/listinfo/i-d-announce, but includes
> ONLY draft announcements where 
>
> - the draft filename begins with "draft-ietf", indicating that the
> draft is being processed in the IETF stream, and 
> been adopted by an IETF working group yet (so, is less "noisy"
> than https://www.ietf.org/mailman/listinfo/i-d-announce), tells you
> that "an IETF working group is taking this draft seriously enough to
> adopt it", and makes this work visible before an IETF Last Call is
> issued, which is usually our trigger for cross-working group and
> cross-area awareness, but happens late in the specification
> development timeline, so major issues are often surprises.
>
> IETF working groups have a great deal of freedom about when they
> choose to adopt an Internet Draft. If your working group adopts an
> Internet Draft REALLY early, before the working group has focused on
> the text, or REALLY late (just before requesting publication), this
> announcement won't be as helpful for people interested in your working
> group's output. If that's likely to cause disruptions for your working
> group, please let us know (either on this mailing list, or at
> iesg@ietf,org)..
>
> We know that mailing lists are not the only way that we communicate
> with the rest of the world - for instance, there exist Twitter feeds
> for RFC and I-D announcements. We'd like for this information to be
> broadly helpful, so if there are ways that you know would help people
> become aware of your working group's work, please let Greg Woods at
> ISOC know - he is helping the IESG on this. 
>
> We're always interested in feedback, so if there's something we're
> missing or getting wrong, please let us know that, too!
>
> Thanks,
>
> [*] we've also been talking with the stream managers for the IRTF,
> IAB, and Independent streams about this, and they may also create a
> similar feed for work that's being taken up in those streams, but the
> IESG is only doing this for the IETF stream.

---

From: Michael Richardson <[email-masked]>
Date: Thu, 06 Dec 2018 12:53:29 -0500

> - the version number for this draft announcement is -00

Seems great.  Could it also have the IETF LC, and RFC-published message too?
Ideally, those message would In-Reply-To/References the original message,
so that in the archives, they get threaded.

> for RFC and I-D announcements. We'd like for this information to be

Maybe this mailing list would just pull from a common DT API, rather than
have the DT create the emails itself?

--
Michael Richardson <[email-masked]>, Sandelman Software Works
 -= IPv6 IoT consulting =-

---

From: Spencer Dawkins at IETF <[email-masked]>
Date: Thu, 6 Dec 2018 14:40:27 -0600

Hi, Andy the former IAB member,

> i-d-announce. Out of curiosity, has the IESG coordinated this with the IAB?

So, there's two levels of answers here.

The IESG has been talking with all of the other stream managers about this,
and (without speaking for them) they've been mostly positive, but each of
their specific streams work a bit differently from the way IETF WGs adopt
drafts - so, the IAB had some thinking to do about whether they might
announce drafts that are taken up by IAB programs, which can happen quite
some time before they're adopted by the IAB itself, for example.

So the IESG is going ahead for the IETF stream, and we'll keep talking to
the other stream managers, and we'll each do the right thing for our
streams, whatever that turns out to be.

For IETF stream drafts, this information (IMO) complements the New-Work
mailing list, administered by the IAB (details at
https://www.ietf.org/mailman/listinfo/new-work). That's a closed list for
inter-SDO information sharing, but what the IETF tends to send there are
working group charter review announcements (they look like
https://mailarchive.ietf.org/arch/msg/ietf-announce/Lq-XHptSL65-43NYcYQLcFKflP8),
and what we're talking about is more granular - if a working group's
charter allows them to work on a new draft without rechartering, it won't
show up on New-Work. So as we move forward on this, there's a conversation
to be had with the IAB about whether this meshes as well as I hope it will.

But I'll let Robert Sparks, who is talking to me on behalf of the tools
team by night and serving on the IAB Liaison Oversight Program by day,
guide me on how, and when, to have that conversation. Mark Nottingham (IAB
prime for that program) and Suzanne Woolf (also serving on that program)
also see posts to the WG chairs mailing list, so they should all be in the
loop when they need to be.

Does that help?

Spencer the former IAB member

>> IETF working groups have a great deal of freedom about when they choose
>> to adopt an Internet Draft. If your working group adopts an Internet Draft

---

From: "Andrew G. Malis" <[email-masked]>
Date: Thu, 6 Dec 2018 16:20:30 -0500

Spencer,

Yes, thanks. When I wrote "coordinating with the IAB", I more had in mind
coordinating with the IAB's SDO liaison management function, rather than
coordinating with the IAB document stream. I should have made that more
clear.

Cheers,
Andy

On Thu, Dec 6, 2018 at 3:40 PM Spencer Dawkins at IETF <
[email-masked]> wrote:

> The IESG has been talking with all of the other stream managers about
> this, and (without speaking for them) they've been mostly positive, but
> each of their specific streams work a bit differently from the way IETF WGs
> adopt drafts - so, the IAB had some thinking to do about whether they might

---

From: Tim Hollebeek <[email-masked]>
Date: Thu, 6 Dec 2018 22:04:50 +0000

> Ideally, those message would In-Reply-To/References the original message,
so
> that in the archives, they get threaded.

I think these are great suggestions.  These are exactly the milestones I
cared about as a participant in other SDOs before I was active here.

-Tim

---

From: Jeffrey Haas <[email-masked]>
Date: Tue, 11 Dec 2018 15:41:54 -0500

> outside without the per-I-D context.

This matches my own observations.  Sadly, the best answer is a "maturity
level" marker in something like the data tracker.

And the use of such a thing would be politically hazardous at best.

-- Jeff