Last Call Guidance to the Community

In line with BCP 9, the IESG issues IETF Last Calls for all documents in the IETF Stream.

In normal cases, since this is the final stage of open community review, the IESG prefers that comments on Last Calls be sent to the last-call@ietf.org list. Authors, WG Chairs and the responsible Area Director are presumed to see all such messages, but they may be copied if the person sending a comment so desires (e.g., by copying the draft-name-xyz.all@ietf.org email alias.)

It is appropriate to send purely editorial or typographical comments only to the authors, WG Chairs, and the responsible Area Director.

If substantive discussion of a technical comment is needed, then it is often appropriate to move that discussion to the WG list, once the comment has been made on the last-call list. (For non-WG drafts, it should normally stay on the last-call list.)

In exceptional cases, a comment may be sent only to iesg@ietf.org. However, the IESG will normally need to discuss these comments with the authors, the WG Chairs, and possibly with the WG as a whole. Once a comment is sent to the IESG, it becomes a contribution to the IETF standards process, even if anonymity is requested.

Please ensure that it is clear which draft is the subject of a comment. From a practical point of view, Last Call comments should preserve the beginning of the original subject header, up to at least the end of the draft name. For example, a comment on:

Last Call: draft-ietf-pigeon-post-02.txt (Avian Mail Transfer Protocol) to Proposed Standard

could carry a subject such as

Re: Last Call: draft-ietf-pigeon-post-02.txt - what about avian flu risk?

This is to ensure that Last Call comments can be automatically sorted.

There are some organized review teams in the IETF (e.g., Gen-ART and the Security Directorate). Reviews from such teams should be sent to the last-call@ietf.org list in addition to the review team itself, if they are intended as Last Call comments.