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RE: When to adopt a draft as a WG doc (was RE: "IETF work is done on the mailing lists")

2012-11-28 10:01:06
I led the discussion in the WG Chairs lunch at IETF 78 on this topic.
Slides at http://wiki.tools.ietf.org/group/edu/wiki/IETF78#

Adrian

-----Original Message-----
From: ietf-bounces(_at_)ietf(_dot_)org 
[mailto:ietf-bounces(_at_)ietf(_dot_)org] On Behalf Of
George, Wes
Sent: 28 November 2012 15:36
To: John Leslie; Barry Leiba
Cc: IETF discussion list
Subject: When to adopt a draft as a WG doc (was RE: "IETF work is done on the
mailing lists")

From: ietf-bounces(_at_)ietf(_dot_)org 
[mailto:ietf-bounces(_at_)ietf(_dot_)org] On Behalf Of
John Leslie

    I'm increasingly seeing a "paradigm" where the review happens
_before_ adoption as a WG draft. After adoption, there's a great lull
until the deadline for the next IETF week. There tend to be a few,
seemingly minor, edits for a version to be discussed. The meeting time
is taken up listing changes, most of which get no discussion. Lather,
rinse, repeat...

[WEG] I've seen several discussions recently across WG lists, WG chairs list,
etc
about this specific topic, and it's leading me to believe that we do not have
adequate guidance for either WG chairs or participants on when it is generally
appropriate to adopt a draft as a WG document. I see 3 basic variants just
among
the WGs that I'm actively involved in:
1) adopt early because the draft is talking about a subject the WG wants to
work
on (may or may not be an official charter milestone), and then refine a
relatively
rough draft through several I-D-ietf-[wg]-* revisions before WGLC
2) adopt after several revisions of I-D-[person]-[wg]-* because there has been
enough discussion to make the chairs believe that the WG has interest or the
draft has evolved into something the WG sees as useful/in charter; Then there
are only minor tweaks in the draft up until WGLC (the above model)
3) don't adopt the draft until some defined criteria are met (e.g.
interoperable
implementations), meaning that much of the real work gets done in the
individual version

It seems to me that these variants are dependent on the people in the WG, the
workload of the group, the chairs, past precedent, AD preferences, etc. It
makes
it difficult on both draft editors and those seeking to follow the discussion
for
there to be such a disparity from WG to WG on when to adopt drafts. I'm not
convinced that there is a one-size-fits-all solution here, but it might be
nice to
coalesce a little from where we are today.
So I wonder if perhaps we need clearer guidance on what the process is
actually
supposed to look like and why. If someone can point to a document that gives
guidance here, then perhaps we all need to be more conscientious about
ensuring that the WGs we participate in are following the available guidance
on
the matter.

Wes George

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