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Re: Guidelines for authors and reviewers

2008-05-30 16:44:48
Hi Paul,
   Thanks for the comments. Please see responses inline.

Paul Hoffman wrote:
At 5:03 PM -0400 5/30/08, Suresh Krishnan wrote:
I'm not sure if
 > that needs a separate "review netiquette RFC", IMO it should be
 a part of the "Tao", or the next Tao if it is not already clear.
Paul Hoffman is working on the TAObis. Maybe he can chime in on this.

<ching!>

The past few editions of the Tao do indeed talk about taking reviews 
with an open mind. The Tao doesn't talk much about *giving* reviews, 
mostly because the intended audience (IETF newcomers) are mostly 
interested in learning how to be in the normal IETF structures, like 
WGs.

Having said that, I agree with some of what Ted Hardie said about the 
tone of the document. It sounds like there are instructions to 
document authors on how they are supposed to act when they get 
reviews. That's bordering on a revision to RFC 2026, which I don't 
think is what you intended. "It is polite to" and "some document 
authors like to" are quite different than "are expected to" and 
"needs to".

I agree that tone might be a bit strong but this can be easily fixed in 
the document. e.g. Replace

"The authors are expected to respond to the reviews within a
  reasonable amount of time."

with

"It is considered polite to respond to the reviews within a
  reasonable amount of time.

but it might be more tricky to define "reasonable amount of time". Do 
you feel that it is out of the scope of this document to define this? If 
so, we can take it out of the document. But doing so diminishes the 
guiding value of the document.


This document emphasizes reviews going to authors instead of reviews 
going to WGs or, in the case of individual submissions, reviews going 
to mailing lists. In the Tao, we emphasize the value of 
communications to groups so that the group can agree, amplify, show 
disinterest, or disagree. In the WGs I have co-chaired, the WG got 
good value out of some of the GenART and SecDir reviews in that it 
made the whole WG think about the topics brought up. This may be a 
fundamental difference in view between this document's authors and my 
preferences, but I think the discussion of where reviewers should be 
sending their reviews is an important one for the IETF community to 
have.

Agree. And this topic (the recipient list of the review) is something I 
think hard about before I send out any review.

Thanks
Suresh
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