MSK,
Please see some inline for some comments on comments
On 2014-12-03 10:45, Murray S. Kucherawy wrote:
On Thu, Jun 12, 2014 at 6:26 AM, The IESG <iesg-secretary(_at_)ietf(_dot_)org
<mailto:iesg-secretary(_at_)ietf(_dot_)org>> wrote:
The IESG has received a request from an individual submitter to consider
the following document:
- 'IETF Working Groups' Secretaries'
<draft-secretaries-good-practices-06.txt> as Best Current Practice
The IESG plans to make a decision in the next few weeks, and solicits
final comments on this action. Please send substantive comments to the
ietf(_at_)ietf(_dot_)org <mailto:ietf(_at_)ietf(_dot_)org> mailing lists by
2014-07-10.
Exceptionally, comments may be
sent to iesg(_at_)ietf(_dot_)org <mailto:iesg(_at_)ietf(_dot_)org> instead.
In either
case, please retain the
beginning of the Subject line to allow automated sorting.
Abstract
The Working Group Secretary's role was succinctly defined in RFC
2418. However, this role has greatly evolved and increased both in
value and scope, since the writing of RFC 2418. This document
updates
RFC 2418 by providing a new definition of the Working Group
Secretary's role. This document also provides a compilation of good
practices and general guidelines regarding the fulfilment of the
role.
This document is intended for established Working Group Secretaries,
individuals motivated by taking up that role, or anyone else simply
interested in understanding better the Working Group Secretary's
role. This document may also be useful for Working Group Chairs to
better appreciate and help develop the value of Working Group
Secretaries.
This document would be published as part of BCP 25.
I've read this document and am generally in support of its progression.
However, I have a few questions and comments.
The filename portion of the document says "good practices". This is a
minor point since that name will vanish on publication, but since it
also does say it in the Abstract, I wonder if the original intent may
have gotten lost. This seems to be an accretion of possible functions
of a WG Secretary, but doesn't really explain how best to perform those
functions (which I infer from the filename).
I think there is a slight creep in meaning from "functions that are
best performed by secretaries" to "how secretaries best perform these
funtions".
The document amounts to an enumeration of the functions of the WG
co-chair, minus the authority to make consensus calls and moderate the
mailing list. Could not the co-chair delegate at least the list
moderation function to a secretary? What about issuing and tracking
calls for document adoption?
Looking at the wg chair - it is not only possible to delegate, but
sometimes close to required. Me and my co-chair once had a document
where we were both co-authors, in that case all the chair task were
delegated to a Shepherd (who in that case also were the responsible AD).
The pwe3 wg delegated Shepherding (including calling consensus and
requesting publication) for a document that "every one" were
co-authoring.
I think that the way of reading this document for this type of delegtion
is that being a secretary it orthogonal, it is not delegated to you
*because* you are a wg secreatry, nor does it disqualify for such
delegation.
Does ensuring documents are in the correct state include submitting them
to the IESG for publication, or is that a reserved function for the
co-chairs?
No - see above!
The document makes reference to several tools or components of tools
(the datatracker in particular) that I've never seen. That's not to say
they don't exist, but I haven't seen them and couldn't find them just
now, so it makes me wonder if the tools team would have to do a bunch of
work to get reality to match what's written here. For example, I just
went into the datatracker and as a working group co-chair I have
privileges in that system with respect to my working groups. However, I
didn't see anywhere in there that I can declare a WG Secretary or
delegate some or all of my powers to that person, despite the fact that
Section 4 says such things "shall" be done. Is this something that a
co-chair would have to request of the Secretariat directly or via a
sponsoring Area Director? If not, does the tools team intend to add that?
Well - the tool team has to answer about their plans, but does hardly
effect progressing this document.
Things like "delegation" are captured in the datatracker, and that is
what the document says: a lot of things are, some of them can only be
done by intervention of an AD or the Secreatariat or a combination
thereof. This document is not the place to describe the dynamics.
Similarly, I'm a little concerned about writing something that
specifically calls out things in our tools that might change over time,
even over a short time if we so decide, rendering this text inaccurate.
For example, rather than referring to
wgname-chairs(_at_)tools(_dot_)ietf(_dot_)org
<mailto:wgname-chairs(_at_)tools(_dot_)ietf(_dot_)org>, it might be better to
say simply
"the working group chairs' mailing list" or suchlike, in case we were to
for example drop "tools." from the addresses.
Maybe, but not urgent.
I think that if appointment of WG Secretaries who do most or even some
of these functions has become commonplace, then this should officially
update RFC2418. What RFC2418 says now is a four-line section; if that's
obsolescent, we shouldn't leave it that way without at least offering a
pointer to the more current practice. More generally, if RFC2418 is
obsolescent, I think we should think about updating it in its entirety.
Sure, how do you define commonplace, the document is written by folks
that are very experienced working a secretaries for big working groups.
The end of Section 3 might overlap or even conflict with
draft-leiba-extended-doc-shepherd (currently expired but not
forgotten). Is there a plan to reconcile these, or am I wrong about
there being common ground here?
I don't see the problem?
I was under the impression that Security Considerations has to do with
impact on the Internet, not on our processes, and so the content of that
section isn't really needed (other than to point out what I just said),
but I could be wrong about that.
I read the "Security COnsideration" section more or less as that there
are no issues that will have an impact on the Internet, and making this
clear while explaining what is effected.
I think that's all I have. Thanks for putting this together.
-MSK
/Loa
--
Loa Andersson email:
loa(_at_)mail01(_dot_)huawei(_dot_)com
Senior MPLS Expert loa(_at_)pi(_dot_)nu
Huawei Technologies (consultant) phone: +46 739 81 21 64