now that we know that the secretariat keeps track of drafts that
claim
to obsolete another draft, we could make this Real Simple:
drafts that say they obsolete another draft get the later
deadline.
Harald (who won't have to decide that)
That would only work if it was "said" in metadata that can be
automatically
verified.
Today, this procedure (letting one I-D obsolete another) is carried
out by the secretariat, manually. I believe the verification step
consists of making sure the draft name is spelled correctly.
In an automated submission tool, we would have to have this be part
of the submission to the tool, of course.
Please correct me if I'm wrong, but it seems like we were solving at
least three problems with the I-D cutoff dates, which were:
- Most important - we expect people to read the drafts before
discussing them at face-to-face meetings, and thought that considering
drafts submitted this morning didn't give working groups enough time
to do necessary homework before having really confused and confusing
discussions
- There is a blizzard of draft submissions, both new and updated
drafts, in the two weeks or so before a cutoff - I believe the
statistic from the last few IETFs is that something like a third to
half the IDs submitted between two meetings are submitted during those
two weeks
- Related to the second problem, in the dawn of time, the
secretariat's ability to process submitted drafts from a meeting
location was limited (so having the flood of drafts arrive for manual
processing at the exact time when their ability to do manual
processing was at its lowest seemed wrong)
Is it just possible that a draft cutoff is no longer necessary to
solve any of these problems?
For the first (I would argue, "the real") problem - 2418 says
7.1. Session documents
All relevant documents to be discussed at a session should be
published and available as Internet-Drafts at least two weeks
before
a session starts. Any document which does not meet this
publication
deadline can only be discussed in a working group session with the
specific approval of the working group chair(s). Since it is
important that working group members have adequate time to review
all
documents, granting such an exception should only be done under
unusual conditions.
So, if a working group follows the "IETF Working Group Guidelines and
Procedures", it doesn't matter whether we have a draft cutoff or not.
The second/third problem goes away for automated submissions, because
it matters much less how many drafts are submitted (for any reasonable
number of drafts) or when they are submitted.
Please remind me what problem we will be solving by closing down an
automated submissions mechanism for a total of four weeks during each
IETF cycle?
(For extra credit, explain how working groups that choose to blow off
2418 and consider Internet Drafts that were announced on working group
mailing lists with pointers to private websites - you know who you
are - are affected by the draft cutoff :-)
It seems to me that the questions of approval for initial submissions
of working group drafts, and of draft revision history, should be
solved without assuming a draft cutoff at all.
See you in Minneapolis,
Spencer
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