Re: Out of the box proposal

[Marshall Eubanks <tme at americafree.tv>]

On May 16, 2009, at 5:17 PM, Yaron Sheffer wrote:

> Hi Jari,
>
> I've seen I-Ds that are in very bad editorial shape, primarily  
> produced by
> non-native English speakers. Such documents are hard to read and  
> obviously
> hard to review in depth - people get distracted by the editorial  
> issues. If
> such documents survive WGLC (maybe they shouldn't, but it's a possible
> outcome), it would be nice if at the discretion of the document  
> shepherd
> they could get an early editorial review by the RFC Editor, so that  
> IESG and
> directorate reviewers can do a better job reviewing the content.

In the new RFC editing system (draft-iab-rfc-editor-model) could this  
be done by the
RFC Production Center ? (In other words, are you asking for optional  
copy-editing, or would
a higher level of engagement be required ?)

Regards
Marshall


> Thanks,
> 	Yaron
>
> > -----Original Message-----
> > From: wgchairs-bounces at ietf.org [mailto:wgchairs-bounces at ietf.org] On
> > Behalf Of Jari Arkko
> > Sent: Saturday, May 16, 2009 22:17
> > To: Henk Uijterwaal
> > Cc: Working Group Chairs
> > Subject: Re: Out of the box proposal
> >
> > Henk,
> >
> > > If the RFC editor will find these errors, then I suggest to move  
> > > their
> > > review to an earlier stage and/or instruct the IESG to focus on the
> > > content, not editorial issues.
> >
> > All end of the process reviews (IESG, LC, directorate, etc) already
> > focus on content. As several people read a document, some editorial
> > issues are bound to come up and they get reported. In fact, I think  
> > we
> > get plenty of them for each document. However, they are not blocking.
> > From an AD perspective they would result in a Comment, not a Discuss.
> > The authors are informed of the issues, but there is no requirement  
> > to
> > fix such problems.
> >
> > By the way, we had an experiment couple of years ago where RFC Editor
> > edits were performed before IETF LC. My personal sense of it was  
> > that it
> > wasn't all that useful for a couple of reasons. First of all, if we  
> > are
> > just talking about editorial issues, they could easily be done in the
> > RFC Editor stage, too. Secondly, we realized that a number of changes
> > were still being made at and after IETF LC, so any editorial cleanup
> > would in any case have to be done later for the changed parts.  
> > Finally,
> > the RFC Editor process speed increased significantly, so there was no
> > reason to attempt to parallelize the editing process and other
> > activities. The early copy editing effort might pay off if the  
> > editorial
> > problems were so severe that readers cannot understand the document.
> > However, I wonder if the document is truly ready to exit the WG at  
> > such
> > a stage.
> >
> > My advice: we already pay the RFC Editor for editorial work. Let  
> > them do
> > it. Authors may fix the editorial problems they have, particularly if
> > they are issuing a new version. However, I think we all would be  
> > better
> > off if reviews focused on content, and AD/author time was focused on
> > that as well. Is something important -- such as congestion control --
> > missing? ABNF compiles? Behaviour rules are complete and  
> > consistent? Are
> > the health warnings about the implications of this specification in
> > place? And so on. I do see a lot of people typing up even editorial
> > review comments. It may or may not be useful; something like a  
> > spelling
> > mistake will be caught by the RFC Editor. And ADs should make  
> > absolutely
> > sure that they really are raising blocking issues only for truly
> > technical matters.
> >
> > Jari
> >
> >
> > Scanned by Check Point Total Security Gateway.