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

2012-11-29 10:26:52
From: barryleiba(_at_)gmail(_dot_)com 
[mailto:barryleiba(_at_)gmail(_dot_)com] On Behalf Of
Barry Leiba

There is no formal process that involves "adopting" anything.  Working
group chairs appoint document editors (this is in RFC 2418, Section
6.3).  There is nothing anywhere that specifies how the first version of
a WG document is formed.
[WEG] snip
We seem to have settled into
a culture of starting with individual submissions and "adopting"
them, but there's nothing that requires that

[WEG] What this says to me is that we are adhering to an ad hoc or de facto 
process, and therefore in most cases we're not really thinking about why we do 
it, or even if we should, we're just going with the flow of past precedent. 
AKA, "that's the way we've always done it/that's just the way we do things 
around here". We wouldn't do that with a technical protocol that we defined, 
we'd update the standard to reflect reality as implemented. So why are we 
behaving differently with our internal protocol?
If it works and people like it, let's document it so that it can be applied 
consistently. If people think it's unnecessary and we should stick to the 
documentation as written (no adoption), let's do that. If we actively *don't* 
want an IETF-wide procedure here, we can even document that the process for WG 
adoption of drafts is WG-specific and could document those specifics in a WG 
policies wiki document maintained by the chairs. There are plenty of WGs that 
have specific ways that they like to handle document submission, reviews, and 
requests for agenda time. It might be useful to have that all in one place so 
that people can know what's expected of them.

So, yes, the chairs get to decide how they want to seed the document
development process, and they have a pretty free hand in making that
decision.  Your ADs are always there for further guidance if you need or
want it.  But there's no formal process for that, and I think that's how
we want it to be.
[WEG] Barry, I respectfully disagree. The whole point I'm making here (and 
Geoff underscored nicely) is that it's currently too variable and too reliant 
on a small group of individual volunteers implementing it correctly. When 
things are not documented, we are dependent on having leadership who innately 
know how to do the right thing. But that leadership turns over fairly 
frequently. so assuming that we'll always have people in leadership who know 
how to make this process work "correctly" without some guidance is pretty 
risky, IMO. As the IETF ages and grows, and personnel (participants and 
leaders) turn over, the oral tradition breaks down in a hurry. Further, no 
matter how good the individuals are at their "jobs" within the IETF, applying 
undocumented policy (especially doing it inconsistently) looks to the outside 
world as arbitrary and capricious, or as centralizing authority, and that's not 
at all productive in an open standards development process. It can be 
discouragi!
 ng to new participants, because it contributes to the overwhelming nature of 
figuring out how to get started as a new document author, and it can make the 
process seem more closed than it actually is.

It is quite possible to document a policy or procedure with directional 
guidance and enough flexibility to allow intelligent adults to think for 
themselves and adapt to the reality of the situation during implementation. I'm 
willing to work on an update to 2418 to cover this apparent gap, but I'd like 
to know whether others agree that this is a problem (and are willing to work on 
the update with me).

Wes George


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