Maybe it would be useful to talk about *necessary* slowness, also.
Indeed.
When I step back and ask what leads to the best specifications (and
indeed, documents in general), it is all rather simple:
1) produce a document.
2) get a small number of quality reviews.
3) revise in response to those reviews
4) ensure that reviewers in step 2 are satisfied by the revision.
5) Repeat steps 1-3 with a _different_ set of reviewers.
6) Repeat step 5 until it becomes clear that the reviewers are finding
only minor editorial issues.
Observations:
1) You can't hurry the above, e.g., by imposing artificial deadlines,
or by saying "no objections during LC, therefor ready to go". You
have to have the reviews, and you have to iterate.
2) Where the IETF is failing (at times) today is that it isn't
actually reaching step 6) prior to sending a document to the
IESG. Result: IESG finds issues that should have been found
earlier.
3) You can "hurry" the process somewhat, but not too much. You can
hurry it in the sense of having steps 1-3 take on the order of 3-5
weeks. I.e., if you get fast (but good reviewers) and responsive
editors, that is a huge win. The obvious corollary is that if steps
3-5 take too long, you lose momentum big time. Indeed, one real
problem we have today is too many WGs/documents are in a one
revision per IETF meeting cycle. I would assert that any
document/WG in this mode has veered off the road and into a ditch.
You can also hurry the process by having good editors and good
reviewers, as they help ensure that one doesn't get stuck in a rut
at step 5).
4) In the above, there is nothing that requires the IESG do things
differently. It really requires that _WGs_ do things
differently. And, indeed there are some WGs that are doing the
above, and doing it fairly well. They have
chairs/editors/participants that move the discussions/the process
along, they employ issue trackers to ensure that things don't get
lost and so they can actually see whether the sorts of issues that
are being raised are still serious, etc. And when those WGs do a
good job, the IESG "delays" are generally short.
In summary, the most important improvement that the IETF needs to make
(IMO) is to get its WGs operating better and make them responsible for
demonstrating that the above steps have been followed (and
specifically, step 6 has been reached) before a document is allowed to
go to the IESG, and having those steps be done in a _timely_ manner.
Thomas
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