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Re: Progressing I-Ds Immediately Before Meetings

2008-07-19 18:36:53
On 2008-07-20 13:01, Ned Freed wrote:
Ned,

...
Frankly, I think it is more about trusting groups to be able to manage
themselves than anything else.

I don't think that's quite fair. If you think about a participant
who is tracking several WGs and/or topics that cut across many WGs,
that person needs to be able to read everything relevant before > arriving.

Really? The vast majority of document revisions I see don't make significant
changes, so even when I'm tracking a bunch of groups it is exceptionally rare
for me to have to read more than a few entirely new or substantially revised
documents. The rest I just check to see what's changed, which takes very 
little
time. (It also highlights another thing that's changed for us - the ready
availability of tools that compare document revisions.)

Again, you appear to assume that all groups have similar document loads and
similar work patterns. This is simply not true.

No, I' not assuming that. I'm talking (selfishly) about the inflow of drafts
that one participant may need to read regardless of source, and I (selfishly)
want that inflow to stop a couple of weeks in advance.


A cutoff about two weeks in advance does make that feasible.

It does nothing of the sort. Again, it is pretty common for documents that 
miss
the deadline to be made available through other means.

Yes, and it's also permissible and does happen for people in the WG
session to object to drafts being discussed that have arrived too
late to be read.


Whether you want to admit it or not, the fact is that individuals see this 
rule
as damaging and are routing around it.

True, but other individuals disagree.


(Let's see - I still have about 12 drafts to read - is that unusual
with one week to go?) I would much rather have that situation, so
that I can prioritize the drafts, than have them arriving until
after I'm already in the air, which would be the inevitable result
of relaxing the cutoff rules.

That said, exceptions should definitely be possible, and I would
delegate that to WG Chair level.

Well, that's a step forward, but instead of delgating an exception process
why not delegate the authority to decide on an appropriate draft handling
policy?

Because I fear that the resulting temptation for each WG to consider
only its own needs, plus the human tendency to work to deadlines,
would result in ~300 drafts arriving on the Friday before the IETF
starts.

    Brian
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