Re: Last Call: draft-iesg-sponsoring-guidelines (Guidance on Area Director Sponsoring of Documents) to Informational RFC

[Brian E Carpenter <brc at zurich.ibm.com>]

John,

On 2007-02-08 00:02, John C Klensin wrote:
> Hi.
>
> I will get to substance in a separate note, and hope others will
> also.  In the interim, two procedural remarks...
>
> (1) This document and draft-klensin-rfc-independent-05.txt
> describe two pieces of the "how a document that does not
> originate in a WG may be reviewed and published" space.  Each
> contains some text that suggests that some documents are better
> handled via the other path. The IAB has made a request for input
> on the "independent" document and now we have a Last Call on
> this one.  
>
> As editor of the "rfc-independent" document, I am awaiting
> instructions from the IAB as to what, if anything, to do next,
> but suspect that the recommendation below would be better
> applied to -06 rather than -05 of that document.
>
> I strongly encourage members of the community to review the two
> documents side by side to ensure that everyone is satisfied that
> they are consistent and that any questions about the overall
> non-WG submission space is adequately covered by one or the
> other of them.

Exactly right. These documents (and draft-iab-rfc-editor) need
to interlock and that is why they are open for review at the same
time.

> I also ask, and hope others will join me in asking, that the
> IESG and IAB take explicit responsibility for coordinating and
> ensuring consistency between these two documents (and, if
> necessary, with draft-iab-rfc-editor).  If they are not
> consistent enough that actions based on them are predictable, I
> fear we can look forward to some difficulties.  It might even be
> useful for the two groups to coordinate titles sufficiently that
> someone looking for information will easily understand that the
> two describe somewhat parallel paths and ways in which those
> paths may or may not be alternatives to each other.

That is the intention; and we can indeed look at the titles
in that light.

> (2) This document is not the product of a working group or of
> extended open discussion in the community.  Version -00 was
> posted around the time of the San Diego meeting and received
> very little public discussion.  The current version was posted
> at the beginning of this month; there has been little discussion
> of it either (at least on public lists -- as the
> Acknowledgements suggest, I've had some input into it via
> private discussions).  The document does not even indicate a
> mailing list on which it can be discussed.  One presumes that
> comments could have been sent to the IESG by those who happened
> to read the I-Ds, but that is a one-way communications path.  

Well, the Last Call message suggested this list. And with one rather
small difference, the draft only attempts to describe current practice.
[The difference is that it calls for a publication request to be sent
to a single AD and not to the IESG as a whole.]
> If the IESG intends this document to merely represent the
> particular procedures they intend to follow within the range of
> alternatives over which they believe they have discretion, then
> it should probably be published as an ION, not an Informational
> RFC. 

We discussed this and reached the opposite conclusion, mainly
because of the point you raise above: consistency with two
other documents that will definitely be RFCs. But it was a
close decision.

> If they intend it to be definitive information for the
> community, especially information that they expect to reference
> as to why something is or is not possible or whether procedures
> are being followed, a two-week Last Call is, IMO, inappropriate
> and inconsistent with the spirit of the provisions in RFC 2026.

If we believed it modified or did violence to 2026, it would need to
be a BCP itself with a whole other style of review. But since its
intent is much milder, a normal LC seemed enough.

    Brian

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