Hi John,
At 07:18 20-10-2013, John C Klensin wrote:
For an earlier and somewhat different take on this issue and a
variation on a proposal, see the long-expired
draft-klensin-stds-review-panel-00.
Some of the comments on the thread point to document review being
less than a quarter the time the Area Director spends weekly on the
role. draft-klensin-stds-review-panel-00 is a starting point to
tackle the time commitment.
The document defines an Internet Standards Review Panel with
responsibility for final processing review of documents for
standardization. Section 2 mentions that the body would not have any
role in negotiation the contents of documents. It may sound like a
hard line. The question the Review Panel is asked is:
Should the document be published?
It is a simple question and the answer can either be "yes" or
"no". The fairly hard line is better. It is easy to lose sight of
the specification as a whole when people focus on specific points in
a specification.
In Section 2.1:
"A clear shortage of competent and willing reviewers for a given
specification should be taken as an indication that the specification
is not of interest to the IETF community"
You and I could argue about whether the above is a good indication or
not. However, the fact is that if there isn't anybody to review the
"has been reviewed by the IETF and is suitable for publication" is
not applicable.
It is better to keep the membership (see Section 2.2) to a small
number with people with specific (area) expertise and people with
cross-area expertise. It has been mentioned on the thread that some
Area Directors only perform a detailed review when a proposal is
relevant to their area.
Section 6.1.2.2 proposes that a Last Call can be requested for an
Individual Submission if its proponents demonstrate that there is
significant community support for the proposal. It removes the
perception of arbitrariness when the matter is subject to Area
Director discretion.
It is worth giving some serious thought to the proposal. Some people
are good at steering. Some people are good at performing technical
reviews. It may be easier for people to volunteer if the roles are separated.
From a different message:
At 07:57 20-10-2013, John C Klensin wrote:
What I haven't seen since the changes of the first half of the
1990s is real community consensus that it is time to do
something rather than agonize about particular symptoms (e.g.,
Nomcom problems getting ample good candidates for all areas),
complain or whine, and ultimately do nothing.
Yes.
Regards,
-sm