My thoughts about the problems of the IETF

[Jonne.Soininen at nokia.com]

Hi Keith, Charlie & others,

I think there are two understandings of reviewing: 1) Review and comment 2) review and decide what to do with the draft.
To be honest, I would tend to think that the first option could be quite useful. However, I think that actually the second understanding of review is why we have the problems in the first place. The problem seems to be that we give this huge burden of reviewing and decision making to the ADs and the burden is simply too much with the current work load.

I would believe that the right way to go is to have the WG the right to approve proposed standards, but at the same time give the needed support for the WGs by reviewing and commenting on the documents. However, leaving the ultimate responsibility to see when a draft is ready for PS to the WGs. 

Cheers,

Jonne.

PS. What happened to the process document? 

> -----Original Message-----
> From: ext Keith Moore [mailto:moore at cs.utk.edu]
> Sent: Thursday, May 01, 2003 9:59 AM
> To: Perkins Charles (IPRG)
> Cc: Loughney John (NRC/Helsinki); problem-statement at alvestrand.no;
> moore at cs.utk.edu
> Subject: Re: My thoughts about the problems of the IETF
> 
> 
> from personal experience, adding outside reviewers can increase AD
> workload, because the AD needs to evaluate the reviews in addition to
> the documents under review.  (outside reviews can and do help
> increase document quality because they catch thing that the IESG and
> working group miss, but they don't generally reduce workload.)
> 
> or if you think that the reviewers should be part of the 
> decision making
> process, consider that the more people involved in making a decision,
> the harder it is to get convergence.
> 
> IESG members are about the only people in IETF who are routinely
> expected to review documents within a short and bounded timeframe (say
> 2-4 weeks), that aren't necessarily in their area of personal or
> professional interest, and without compensation.  it would be 
> difficult
> to impose these demands on outside reviewers, so the result of trying
> to rely on outside reviewers might mean more delay in getting 
> documents
> reviewed.
> 
> two ways that outside reviewers might help reduce workload:
> 
> 1. require all documents to have N favorable outside reviews, each
> from an IESG-appointed reviewer pool, before going to IESG review
> 
> 2. provide that any document which has more than Z unfavorable
> reviews from the reviewer pool need not be considered by IESG
> 
> however, if we give outside reviewers any formal power we need to
> define ethics for such review - such as, reviewers should not accept
> compensation for reviews.  otherwise people will try to buy favorable
> reviews for their pet projects and unfavorable reviews for others.
> 
>