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Re: meta-issues on charter discussions (was: Re: WG Review: Recharter of Internationalized Domain Names inApplications, Revised (idnabis))

2009-08-19 15:00:51


--On Wednesday, August 19, 2009 13:39 -0400 Spencer Dawkins
<spencer(_at_)wonderhamster(_dot_)org> wrote:

Dear IESG,

I can't think of ANYONE who wouldn't be better off if we
published deltas for WG charter revisions when we ask for
comments. We can each trivially produce our own deltas, but if
you want feedback from the community, providing deltas is
likely to get more (and more helpful) feedback.

If the approach taken also accommodated the kind of charter
thrashing where Robert could distribute two revisions of
SIP-CLF before IETF 75, distribute three revisions to the
proposed charter three times during IETF 75 based on hallway
and meeting room discussions, and send out a "here's where the
proposed charter is" e-mail (with a trail showing how we got
there) after IETF 75, that would be even better. Robert is
good and has SIP-CLF charter revisions under source code
control, but it would be superb if all of the proposed
revisions were under source code control at the same location.

Much like we now do for Internet-Drafts... :D

Hmm.  Maybe that thought is more important and useful than you
may have realized.   

I'm not sure that having the charter process get more and more
formalized is a good idea.  In fact I suspect, for several
reasons, that it is a bad one and, in many cases, the cause of
delays in getting work progressed with no good reason.  

However, it seems clear that we are going down that path.  If we
are, then perhaps it is time to start actually posting charter
drafts as I-Ds, taking advantage of all of the mechanisms we
have for posting those documents, dealing with revisions and
diffs, etc.   If the IESG were to encourage the use of 
   draft-charter-foo-NN.txt
for drafts of a charter for a WG with a tentative/preliminary
acronym of "foo", many of the issues with different versions
floating around, inability to track changes, etc., would just
disappear... without inventing any really new mechanisms.

Those I-Ds would obviously not ever be published as RFCs.
Approved charters could still be posted onto WG web pages by
copying (not reference).  But, as a charter-development
mechanism, using the I-D mechanism could actually reduce the
burdens on ADs and others to maintain pre-WG pages, etc. -- and
reducing load on ADs is always, IMO, A Good Thing.

IMO, of course.

Mine too.

    john



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