--On Saturday, 19 July, 2008 06:56 -0500 Spencer Dawkins
<spencer(_at_)wonderhamster(_dot_)org> wrote:
...
... so we might just decide that this is just as bogus as
"drafts disappear
after six months", for the same reasons, and remove the block
completely, and trust WG chairs to ensure that drafts
discussed in the meetings WERE announced early enough for
participants to read them
Spencer and others,
I wish this would work, but we've tried it --it describes the
situation we had before we had any posting limits. Back then,
one could submit a document through the Friday before the
meeting and then start praying that the Secretariat would get it
up before, e.g., the following Thursday.
But, more important, it does several things to us, all of which
are bad (although to different degrees):
* WG agendas may not be able to be nailed down until
much too close to the meeting. Since those agendas are
often used by people to make plans about which sessions
to attend, rules about them being posted well in advance
(even if sometimes not obeyed) help all of us. Late I-D
submissions prevent those agendas from firming up unless
the WG Chair takes a firm "once I post the agenda, no
new documents count" position. But, where the new
document is actually a revision, that creates silly
states, since part of the WG will have prepared on the
basis of version N and the rest will be working from
version N-1. Not an impossible situation, but it makes
it harder to run effective meetings.
* If people come into the WG session having studied
document version N-1 but the discussion occurs using a
late-posted version N, they have ample grounds for
appealing any conclusions, or even the fact that the
discussion was held, on the grounds that their inability
to prepare was discriminatory. We don't need that.
* If a WG chair starts making "this one is important
enough to consider despite late posting but that one
isn't" decisions (which are, IMO, inevitable), it opens
things up to a new range of opportunities for claims of
discriminatory behavior.
* We have enough trouble getting people to read drafts
in advance of meetings that doing something that
encourages people to sit in a WG session, reading and
trying to catch up, is just unwise.
If it were important enough, we could, IMO, work around all of
those issues except possibly the last. But, for the
overwhelming number of cases, submission cutoffs are a better
idea. Now, the particular deadlines we have now were set
because of Secretariat manual-handling limitations in order to
guarantee documents would be posted before the meeting started
and, hence, IMO, should be reviewed in the light of changed
circumstances. We almost certainly do not need three weeks for
new drafts. Maybe we could even manage a one-week (or a bit
more) cutoff for everything. But I suggest that we should keep
some cutoff to protect ourselves from worse nonsense and then,
as discussed in an earlier note, make exceptions when they are
obviously justified by good sense.
john
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