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Long review tail

2013-05-02 09:54:56
I your blog, you wrote:

Having been involved in the process for many years, often the bigger changes 
at this stage relate to cross-area issues, or the fact that the careful 
reviews from the IETF last call, directorates, and 15 ADs often represents a 
significant increase in the number of non-WG people looking at the document.

If I may make a suggestion, I suspect that the problem statement suggests its 
own solution: get cross-area reviewers involved in the working group process 
earlier. There is a trade-off in that, of course, which is that if the 
cross-area review happens too early it may happen on a document that isn't 
really ready for cross-area review. But bottom line, that's what you need to 
have.

As a working group chair, what I have done on a number of occasions is ask one 
directorate or another (usually the security directorate, which is not to pick 
on them but to be frank) to review a document that I think has need of their 
expertise. This has not, in my history, been fruitful; I have gotten a few 
responses, but not many. If there were a way to request those that would in 
fact result in reviews, I would include it in my standard WGLC process, and I 
suspect that would have a salubrious effect.

The other thing that I might suggest is a comment I have made before: if in the 
opinion of the IESG a document needs a lot of work (e.g., non-trivial changes), 
return it to the working group. I know of, due to some spam I received a few 
months ago, an editorial service in London that will for a small fee (a common 
IETF document would be perhaps 100 pounds) review and update a document; 
pointing the option out to a working group chair might be as useful a response 
as any. Corporate technical writing services might also be called in. Whatever 
the technical issues a document has, the place for them to *not* be worked out 
is with an AD simply holding the document hostage; it is to say it needs work 
and send it back for the work.

Both of those would be likely to simplify the life of an AD as well.

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