On Mon, 08 Jan 2007 10:24:23 -0800
Dave Crocker <dhc2(_at_)dcrocker(_dot_)net> wrote:
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.
Dave, a lot of this discussion has boiled down to a single topic, one
that's been talked about for a very long time: early, cross-area review.
Unfortunately, we've tried several schemes that haven't worked and we
don't really know how to do better. All have had some successes; none
have scaled. It seems to boil down to this: if enough time and effort
is invested, by ADs, WG participants, and reviewers, it can work. But
it takes that kind of focus, and extra cycles by reviewers who aren't
necessarily interested in the subject area are few and far between.
Extra documents don't help much, either, because they're *strongly*
resented by WG members who see them as just more process imposed by the
IESG.
I tried several things myself when I was AD. If I were still AD, I'd
keep trying. But I don't have any new ideas, and I'm skeptical of
repeating old ones.
--Steve Bellovin, http://www.cs.columbia.edu/~smb
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