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

[john.loughney at nokia.com]

Brian,

This would be good a good thing.  I think keeping track of reviewers and
their reviews would be a good thing, just in case a WG gets a really
bad early review, they could check the reviewer's previous reviews.

I think that the early reviews should be non-blocking, and care has
to be taken in order to ensure quality.  -00 drafts tend to be 
incomplete and of lesser quality than drafts in IETF LC, so these
need to be considered during the review.

Additionally, the early review should be included in the (eventual)
write-up when the draft is finally submitted to the IESG for
final IETF review.

Question - would this be for all documents, or (as I would suggest)
non-Informational documents.

John

>-----Original Message-----
>From: wgchairs-bounces at ietf.org 
>[mailto:wgchairs-bounces at ietf.org] On Behalf Of ext Brian E Carpenter
>Sent: 15 February, 2006 17:17
>To: wgchairs at ietf.org
>Subject: Re-revised idea for early cross-area review
>
>Hi,
>
>Coming back to an old discussion with a new spin (a dispatcher):
>
>As you know,the IESG is concerned to ensure that documents are 
>reviewed for possible cross-area issues as early as possible, 
>before they are in final IESG review. This is to avoid "late surprises"
>where serious cross-area problems are found after a WG has 
>completed its work on a draft. On the other hand we don't want 
>to add bureaucracy or steps in the process, so this kind of 
>review needs to be done in parallel.
>
>The overhead of asking for every draft to be reviewed at an 
>early stage by every Area would be enormous and often 
>pointless. Thus, the best option appears to be generalist 
>reviews at an early stage.
>We have some experience now with generalist reviews at a late 
>stage, through the Gen-ART team that Harald set up, and we 
>know that it can work reasonably well with a team of reviewers 
>and someone to act as "dispatcher."
>
>The logical moment to solicit early cross-area review is when 
>a WG formally adopts a draft as a WG item (i.e. the draft is 
>added to the WG charter page). At that point, the draft is one 
>that is by definition on its way through the process.
>
>We'd like your comments on a way to achieve this.  The thought 
>is not to add any new process step or hurdle for the WGs.  It 
>may add a a bit of additional, but integral, work responding 
>to any reviews that are sent.  In outline (with details to be decided),
>
>- a new list, perhaps early-reviews at ietf.org, will be created. Anybody
>   can join it, but joining it is understood to indicate willingness
>   to carry out early reviews.
>
>- the list membership is made visible
>
>- whenever a WG formally adopts a draft as a WG item (i.e. the draft
>   is added to the WG charter page), the secretariat will generate a
>   message to the early-reviews list, saying something like
>
>     The FOOBAR WG has adopted draft-ietf-foobar-XXX-00.txt as 
>a WG draft
>     and solicits cross-area review. Comments should follow 
>the guidelines
>     at <URL> and should be sent to foobar at ietf.org within four weeks
>
>- 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.
>
>(It was also commented that we need a tool to support reviews 
>and comment tracking - agreed, but it's a separate issue.)
>
>      Brian
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>