--On Wednesday, August 31, 2011 11:34 +0300 Jari Arkko
<jari(_dot_)arkko(_at_)piuha(_dot_)net> wrote:
Eric, John,
Would having professional editors make a difference here?
I know it is controversial, but there is at least one other
...
I think the existing Discuss criteria already says very
clearly that editorial comments cannot be blocking DISCUSSes.
This issue drifts quickly from DISCUSS criteria into how we
review, approve, and edit documents, but I think they are
completely intertwined... so please forgive the apparent
digression.
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 :-)
Yes, but... First of all, a long list of "editorial comments"
from one or more ADs can do fully as good a job of slowing a
document down as a DISCUSS or two. And anyone smart enough to
be on the IESG is more than capable of disguising what is really
an editorial comment as a substantive issue that gets a DISCUSS.
Part of the problem is that there are a whole series of judgment
calls tangled up with this topic. For example:
* If an AD says "this particular paragraph is really important
to the specification and, after several readings, I can't tell
what is actually means or whether a particular implementation
would be conforming", that is a problem, certainly worthy of a
"DISCUSS" (or, given Keith's typology, "NO until it is fixed".
On the other hand, "this particular paragraph is important and
it is much harder to understand than it should be, even though
the intent is clear" is an editorial comment that should be
non-blocking. I think we all know that the boundary between
those two can be very thin and even a matter for debate.
* I can't speak for others, but I'm often tired with a document
for which I've got responsibility by the time I get it past the
small revisions and nit-picking or WG LC and pre-IETF-LC
comments from ADs. Faced with what I consider an inappropriate
editorial comment or even an inappropriate DISCUSS, I have a
choice between pushing back (thereby guaranteeing that I will
have to deal with the document for additional weeks or months)
or just making the requested changes and getting the document
off my plate. I'm probably more stubborn about editorial
matters than most people, but even I usually just give in.
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.
Yes, and I've been saying that, along with variations on "let
them do their job" for years. But it introduces another set of
issues. I don't think I'm giving away a secret by saying that
they believe that their contracts and the way their performance
is measured focus on pages of published output per month. They
also believe that the IESG has told them things that amount to
"minimal editing" or "copy editing only" on many occasions.
Unless we can change things to shift from measuring what is easy
to include a focus on quality improvements, the RFC Editor ends
up in an impossible situation.
From a standardization perspective, it also isn't desirable to
make lots of editorial changes post-approval. AUTH48 is a
rather dangerous process because it is easy to make mistakes
there that no one catches or, again, for an exhausted author to
make "it is easier to let this go than to fight about it"
decisions. One could, in principle, send all such documents
back to a producing WG for final, pre-publication review but, in
my experience, most of the people in most WGs get more exhausted
by the document end-game than most authors (and most other
participants want to reopen long-dead issues by questioning the
language used to describe them).
This is precisely why many SDOs use a two-stage vote in which
the first vote approves the general concepts and technical
content, the document then gets edited into final form by
profession staff, and then the first and only actual approval
vote occurs (possibly by a different body with a different
mission). That wouldn't work well in the IETF... and not only
because we have a more-than-one-step standards process. I
think we could adopt a process in which a WG, or an AD, could
look at a document before IETF LC and say "this is going to need
a lot of editorial work before approval but the technical
content looks ok, so let's hand it off to the RFC Editor now and
get it cleaned up before a final WG review and IETF LC". But
that has a lot of procedural and budgetary implications and I
don't know if we are ready to deal with them.
(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.)
Agreed. See above.
best,
john
_______________________________________________
Ietf mailing list
Ietf(_at_)ietf(_dot_)org
https://www.ietf.org/mailman/listinfo/ietf