----- Original Message -----
From: "Warren Kumari" <warren(_at_)kumari(_dot_)net>
To: "Michael Richardson" <mcr+ietf(_at_)sandelman(_dot_)ca>
Cc: <ietf(_at_)ietf(_dot_)org>
Sent: Thursday, March 02, 2017 7:40 PM
I've worked with a number of different authors, and there does seem to
be a wide range of preferences.
I personally like to publish early, and often; I'll often publish a
new version integrating just one persons comments (or, of they are
nits, batch up a few sets into one version). If there are lots of
comments going back and forth, I don't think it is easy for WG
participants to mentally keep track of all the different comments, how
they interrelate, and what the final text will look like. I also think
that it is politer to respond to feedback by integrating and
publishing a new version, instead of just saying "Thanks, I'll get to
them sometime....".
Committing to GitHub kinda accomplishes this, but a: it's harder for
participants to find, and b: the github version is a second class
citizen.
But, other authors seem to have a different view -- they'd much rather
get everything fully squared away, all comments addressed, all 't's
crossed and 'i's dotted.
How sensible other authors are!
A number of I-Ds I have seen in the recent past got a comment from one
experienced in the field which led the author to issue a revised
version, which prompted a comment from another experienced in the field
contradicting the first comment which led the author to ..
I give up and await IETF Last Call, or if it is an I-D where my interest
is not major, give up altogether; life's too short to track a series of
somersaults.
The IETF proceeds at a leisurely pace, taking a week or two or more for
comments to appear, so updating more often than that is
counter-productive.
Tom Petch
One of the stickier points is what to do during WGLC -- unfortunately,
in many groups this is where the majority of the review and feedback
happens, and it is often viewed as poor form to revise during WGLC.
It's often hard for the *authors* to keep track of what the consensus
is when there are lots of comments, what the new text would look like,
etc -- expecting random WG participants to do so is (IMO) unreasonable
and leads to frustration and overlapping comments. I'd personally
rather publish new versions *during WGLC* saying "This is what this
looks like now, does this address your issues?" than trying to explain
that we will move text from Section 3.2.5.4.3 bullet 9 to Section
1.7.4 to address Mike's comment, but that will mean that Billy's
comments no longer apply because it removes the text that he's
commenting on, other than the nits about the case of the acronym,
which we agreed to change globally, except in section 8, because it is
quoting from another RFC. Confused yet?
W
On Wed, Mar 1, 2017 at 11:04 AM, Michael Richardson
<mcr+ietf(_at_)sandelman(_dot_)ca> wrote:
For the third time in two days I find myself, when asking others for
opinions
about some text, pointing at github commit logs. With the beautiful
makefiles we often have, one can't even depend upon having a
formatted .txt
version there!
This is not a rant for or against git or github, but rather about
what I
perceive as a shyness about posting intermediate versions of
Internet Drafts
to the datatracker.
I understand that in academia, they never like letting half-baked
ideas out,
and so the -00 that we see from academics are often overdue and
overly
polished. I know I can't fight that, but at least the -01, etc.
could be
issued faster?
I've even heard some push back from people along the lines of, "wow,
that ID
has 27 revisions, is it really stable?", and my feelings have often
been more
along the lines of, "wow, that revision has 27 revisions, the
authors are
really keen and responsive".
I appreciate for some reviewers that having more revisions implies
that they
think they have to look at the text more often.
But given the diff utilities, it shouldn't matter how many revisions
there
were before times you look, as you can just skip the intermediate
versions.
--
Michael Richardson <mcr+IETF(_at_)sandelman(_dot_)ca>, Sandelman Software
Works
-= IPv6 IoT consulting =-
--
I don't think the execution is relevant when it was obviously a bad
idea in the first place.
This is like putting rabid weasels in your pants, and later expressing
regret at having chosen those particular rabid weasels and that pair
of pants.
---maf