Point-by-point responses (was: Re: Protocol-00)

[Paul Hoffman]

At 12:17 AM -0400 5/23/08, John C Klensin wrote:
>I believe that note also discussed the fact that a point by
>point explanatory response to an omnibus set of comments is
>immensely time-consuming, especially when those comments
>intermix editorial comments, issues that the WG has not
>addressed yet and that are certain to be controversial (in this
>case, including reorganization requests), substantive but
>largely uncontroversial issues, and repetitions of issues the
>group had already resolved and even more so when many of the
>change suggestions do not include an explanation of why you
>believe they should be made (essentially the mirror image of
>what you are asking me to provide).  Such point by point
>responses are rarely provided in the IETF, especially at early
>stages of work on a document in a WG, partially because it could
>be an easy avenue to using extensive comments as a denial of
>service attack on the group.

And yet that is precisely the point we are at now. We are supposed to 
determine which topics are germane for the WG. I tried to nudge this 
along with an informal list of topics, but that discussion was not 
picked up on by the document authors.

As far as I can tell from the new protocol document, the preferences 
that people in the WG stated were ignored. Maybe that was due to the 
fact that it was an informal poll; maybe it was due to the fact that 
not enough people responded (such none of the design team); maybe it 
was due to the design team wanting to have WG-branded documents 
before asking again. We don't know. Better, more concise 
communication would help the WG know where we are in the process.