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Re: Discuss criteria for documents that advance on the standards track

2011-08-31 03:34:28
Eric, John,

Would having professional editors make a difference here?

I know it is controversial, but there is at least one other area
in which we should be raising the bar for DS/IS by dropping the
bar for Proposed.  If we really want to get PS specs out quickly
while the percentage of people who easily write very high
quality technical English in the IETF continues to go down, we
need to stop the behavior of various IESG members simulating
technical editors or translators to "fix" PS text (or insisting
that the author or WG do so, which, IMO, is less bad but still
often a problem).

I think the existing Discuss criteria already says very clearly that editorial 
comments cannot be blocking DISCUSSes.

I see a lot of language feedback from IESG and directorate reviews, but its 
rare to have them appear in the DISCUSSes. If they do, its inappropriate, you 
should push back. And I'm sure you will :-)

Besides, we pay the RFC Editor a large amount of money every year to do the 
editing. Documents need to be clear enough to be understood, but the RFC editor 
can handle most of the editorial problems.

(That being said, I've seen documents that were sent back because they really 
were not understandable. Obviously there is some bar under which you should not 
go, or the document cannot advance at all. This happens more in WG stages than 
in the IESG. But if you can't communicate your idea clearly then I think it 
should be up to you to hire co-workers/editors to  help clarify your idea... 
not the IETF's problem, IMHO.)

Jari

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