Intermediate wg summaries

Brian E Carpenter wrote:
> 1. ADs physically don't have time to read intermediate drafts oustide their
> own Area. So while they may suspect that a WG is heading in a worrisome
> direction, they aren't in a position to do much about it.
Folks,

I hope no one doubts the basic truth of Brian's observation.  My own feeling, in 
fact, is that expecting all ADs to read even the final draft is an excessive 
burden.  Either way, it leads to the basic question of how ADs can be informed 
of the salient issues in a wg effort, long before an IESG vote?
Currently, wgs produce 4 things:  charter, email list archive, meeting 
notes/summary, and output documents (specifications or whatever).  None of these 
permits intelligent assessment of working group progress, by someone who is not 
significantly involved in a wg's on-going effort, without making a massive 
effort to review the archive and notes record.  At best, the meeting summary is 
good for incremental issues, not summarizing integrated design (or syntax, or 
operations, or...) decisions.
Given that working groups operate over many months or years, it seems like we 
need something that is a work-to-date design/decision summary.
If a working group's effort is solid and defensible, along the way, then it 
ought to be reasonable to request that it produce a summary of its work-to-date 
in a fashion that allows useful, critical review, without having to dive into 
the considerable detail of a specification or the wg record.
There is likely to be an added benefit for this, beyond giving ADs practical 
input for early- and middle-stage assessment:  The rest of the community gets 
it, too.  And by "the rest of the community", I mean the entire Internet 
community, not just IETF participants.
For work of any extended interest, being able to see a summary of on-going work 
that looks relevant to them has to be useful for deciding whether to participate 
but particularly useful for folks who cannot participate directly but are likely 
to be affected by the final output.

d/

--

  Dave Crocker
  Brandenburg InternetWorking
  bbiw.net

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