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Re: Is the datatracker authoritative (was: WG Review: Dynamic Host Configuration (dhc))

2013-08-31 04:00:20
SM,

I assumed that the message was generated by the data tracker.

The secretariat sends out last call and WG review messages, but the data comes 
from the tracker. For WGs, this is actually a relatively recent addition. A 
while ago the proposed charters were not tracked in the database. In any case, 
I'm not sure what happened - maybe an oversight in the still manual part of the 
process to send out the mail or maybe the milestone update (that was done just 
a few days ago) did not get there in time. I'm glad you noticed the issue, 
however! Thanks!

announcement really ought to just point to the datatracker, since what's 
there is normative.

This is an individual opinion.  Please assume that the entire IETF disagrees 
with it.  The datatracker is not the authoritative version of a charter.  It 
is the message archived in the relevant mailing list which is considered as 
authoritative.  The rationale is related to note of record.

We try really hard to make sure various sources agree. In general, the amount 
of automation has been increasing, and we run almost everything just off the 
data tracker, so I'm hopeful that we're mostly OK. With some exceptions, such 
as this incident.

But as a practical point, I have to tell you that at least this AD can not 
remember much about documents and working groups without going through a 
database. We rely a lot on the datatracker, and the data tracker is also the 
source of the data that you see on the web site. We often go through e-mail on 
a topic as well (such as when deciding whether to recommend the approval of a 
document), but for things like charters the tracker really is in practice what 
we look at - normative or not.

Jari