SM,
Many thanks for your feedback.
I will incorporate your suggestions and few other people's comments in a new
version of the document.
Some further discussion on a couple of points that deserve it:
I read draft-arkko-iesg-crossarea-03 as I am trying to learn about the IETF.
In Section 2:
"This work has been going on in the TRILL WG on the Internet Area
and in parallel in the ISIS WG on the Routing Area."
There is an assumption that I know what "WG" means.
The actual problem is finding out what's the main topic of the draft within an IETF context and identifying the proper working group. There should also be someone to identify related topics which will be useful as input for the draft to progress. The IESG part of the "process" is more about identifying which working groups should be chartered and in which area they should fall. The Area Shopping heading looks at the problem from an IESG perspective. The "lowest bar" is the IETF participant's perspective.
It took me some time to understand that the draft was about how work is organized in the IETF. I didn't really understand what area means except that Routing Area must have something to do with router and Security Area must have something to do with security. I decided to read the Informational reference and I learned that it is a management division within the IETF.
I suggest having some text in Section 1 to introduce the areas.
Admittedly, the document was written from the perspective of the IETF managers
(ADs, WG chairs) but comments from you and Brian have led me to understand
better that we need to include more about the participant aspect as well.
In Section 3:
"Cross-area work is needed, of course, in any situation where a
particular technical problem does not cleanly map to one
organization."
Shouldn't that map to a working group?
Normally, yes, but I could imagine topics that are wider than one working group
but still within an area.
In Section 4:
"But it is also possible that concerns raised in one forum are
not understood in another, and this can lead to an effort going
forward after finding the "lowest bar" forum to take it up."
Brian Carpenter commented about Area Shopping in his Gen-ART review. Scrolling back to Section 3, "from an IETF
participant's point of view, it is important that there is a working group where the technical topic that he or she is
interested in can be discussed. The problem is how to identify that working group. I went to
http://datatracker.ietf.org/list/wg/ to find the working group where I can discuss about my solution to an IPv6 problem. I
found "IPv6 Maintenance". I am not sure what that group does. As the problem affects IPv6 operations I picked
the "IPv6 Operations" working group. I post a message to the mailing list. There isn't any reply. My solution
does some DNS stuff. I try the "Domain Name System Operations" working group. I keep trying various mailing
lists until I find the "right" venue.
The best place to find out what topics belong under a working group is within the
charter page, e.g., http://tools.ietf.org/wg/<somewg>/charters (although for
some working groups, particularly long-lived generic groups such as v6ops, 6man, dhc,
etc. the charter usually does not outline the specific current work items). The
working groups chairs are helpful and also usually quite knowledgeable about what is
going on in the IETF even outside their own groups, and can help you find the right
venue.
"For the regular participant it is difficult to find out where there
are important documents that would deserve more review."
It's not a matter of important documents. I would say that it is about the
regular participant being able to find that document which he/she believes is
important or the subject of discussion where his/her input would be helpful.
Right.
Jari