John,
Your description of the reasons for having the draft sub-
mission dead-lines may agree with original thinking that went
into setting them, initially. However, there were collateral
benefits that the new automated submission process helps to
improve - but does not eliminate.
For the people who participate in a fair number of working
groups in the IETF, requiring early posting allows for a greater
likelihood that they will be able to at least skim each new draft
sometime before setting up their laptop at the beginning of each
meeting in which that draft will be discussed.
Moreover, having a week longer grace period for subsequent
submissions also makes sense from this same perspective - because
it is usually the case that there is less new material to absorb
in a -01 or subsequent version than there was in a -00 version.
Not always, but usually. One exception is when a draft becomes
a working group draft - which means it becomes a -00 version with
virtually no change from a previous (often a -03 or -04) version.
--
Eric Gray
Principal Engineer
Ericsson
-----Original Message-----
From: John C Klensin [mailto:john-ietf(_at_)jck(_dot_)com]
Sent: Friday, January 18, 2008 2:06 PM
Cc: ietf(_at_)ietf(_dot_)org
Subject: Internet Draft Submission cutoff dates
Hi.
The current cutoff schedule for Internet Drafts dates from my
time on the IESG (i.e., is ancient history). It was conditioned
on the pre-IETF rush and the observation that the Secretariat,
at the time, required a sufficiently long time to get drafts
posted in the pre-meeting rush that, unless there was a two-week
cutoff, we couldn't reliably have all expected documents in hand
prior to the start of the meetings.
Splitting the "new" and "revised" drafts was a further attempt
to compensate when the load built up enough that the choices
were between such a split and moving the submission deadline for
_all_ I-Ds back even further. The conclusion was that a split
was desirable because a three-week cutoff for revisions would
seriously interfere with WGs getting work done in the run-up to
IETF meetings.
With the automated posting tools typically getting I-Ds posted
in well under an hour and a tiny fraction of the documents being
handled manually, the original reasons for the submission
cutoffs no longer apply. It is still reasonable, IMO, to have a
cutoff early enough to permit people to receive and read
documents before departing for the meetings, but it seems to me
that criterion would require a cutoff a week (or even less)
prior to the meeting, not two or three weeks. Other models
about giving people time to read might suggest leaving the "new
document" cutoff at three weeks before the meeting, but seeing
if we could move the "revision" cutoff considerably closer to
the meetings.
I don't necessarily object to retaining the current two and
three week posting deadlines, but I'd like to know that the IESG
has done a careful review of those deadlines and their
applicability to the current environment and concluded that they
are still appropriate, rather than having the secretariat retain
them simply on tradition and autopilot.
thanks,
john
_______________________________________________
Ietf mailing list
Ietf(_at_)ietf(_dot_)org
https://www1.ietf.org/mailman/listinfo/ietf
_______________________________________________
Ietf mailing list
Ietf(_at_)ietf(_dot_)org
https://www1.ietf.org/mailman/listinfo/ietf