Re: Re-revised idea for early cross-area review

["Randy Presuhn" <randy_presuhn at mindspring.com>]

Hi -

> From: "Brian E Carpenter" <brc at zurich.ibm.com>
> To: <wgchairs at ietf.org>
> Sent: Wednesday, February 15, 2006 7:16 AM
> Subject: Re-revised idea for early cross-area review
...
> - NEW: we appoint a volunteer dispatcher, who will assign drafts to reviewers
>    on a round-robin basis, to ensure that each draft gets at least one review
> 
> - reviewers will send their generalist reviews to the early-reviews list
>    for archiving, and to the WG concerned
> 
> - WGs are expected to treat these generalist reviews seriously, especially
>    when they indicate serious cross-area problems or gaps. But their formal
>    place in the IETF process is the same as any other comments
> 
> If you think the general idea is good, we'll solicit your inputs for
> the early review guidelines, on the foundations of the work done by the
> former ICAR WG.
...

I like the general idea.  In reading some of the other comments in this
thread, I think we may be tripping over different understandings and
expectations for "reviews" at different points in a document's journey
through the process.  I also think that "big picture" or "generalist"
comments are especially useful early in the cycle, so that considerations
like manageability, internationalization, security, scalability, and so on
are given some thought from the very beginning, not as WG last call
comments.  The very fact that a -00- frequently will not have fully
stable terminology or even structure makes it easier to address
problems like terminology conflicts from the outset, rather than having
to work around "established usage" when WG last call happens.

Randy