Consensus Call Tranche 1 (Document Organization)

[Martin Duerst]

At 05:54 08/10/07, Vint Cerf wrote:
>DUE DATE: October 10, 2008 (ET)
>
>Place your reply here:

NO.

Rationale:
- While John has shown in -03 that there are some differences
  between him and Mark in terms of what should be normative and
  what not, I don't think these will take that long to hash out
  (as far as I have checked, I lean somewhat more towards John's
  assessment than Mark's, but still somewhat in between).

- The parts of the Rationale document that I have read give me
  the impression that it's far from ready, for ANY purpose.
  The main problems are:
  1) It's written in present or future tense, like "here's
     what we are going to do, and why", in many places,
     which means it has to be re-written to actually be
     readable after publication. While such a rewrite might
     slightly lower its value for current readers, the
     earlier this is done, the better.
  2) While the document makes several successful attempts
     at clarifying some of the rationale behind some of
     the design and some of the changes between 2003 and 2008,
     each of the pieces is written with some assumptions about
     previous knowledge, and these assumptions differ widely,
     and aren't built up step by step or made explicit.
     I would personally not recommend anybody to read this
     document unless I'd be sure the person is so much into
     IDNA and related issues already that s/he can take a
     critical approach to the document (being able to
     identify its strengths and weaknesses) or I'd be sure
     I'd be able to babysit the reader to correct wrong
     assumptions.

- I'm not exactly happy with the way this "consenus call" is
  carried out. While I don't think there is something "deeply"
  flawed, I don't think that "in the absence of a consensus against
  each proposal, it will be assumed that the proposal is acceptable
  to the Working Group." agrees with IETF practice. IETF practice
  uses rough consensus to move forward, it doesn't redefine
  no consensus as consensus for whatever is currently around.


Regards,   Martin.


>COMMENTS:
>
>
>Procedure:
>
>
>There are several decisions that the working group will need to make to confirm consensus.  I will send a series of proposals over the next two weeks requesting YES or NO positions on each within a 4 day window. If NO is the response, a reason for that position needs to be stated. If there is a clear consensus based on responses or in the absence ofa consensus against each proposal, it will be assumed that the proposal is acceptable to the Working Group.
>
>
>Parenthesized symbols (e.g., "(R.1)") after the items are references to the issues lists where additional explanations can be found, as sent by John Klensin as body parts "idnabis-protocol-issues-rev3" and "idnabis-rationale-issues-03" on a message titled 'Issues lists and the "preprocessing" topic'  to the working group on 18 August (<http://www.alvestrand.no/pipermail/idna-update/2008-August/002537.html>http://www.alvestrand.no/pipermail/idna-update/2008-August/002537.html)
>
>This group needs to get its documents out; it is behind its original schedule. It should be noted that the IDN ccTLD and gTLD selection initiatives at ICANN have already begun so that delay may weaken the IETF's ability to assist in a rational deployment of IDNA.
>
>
>(1) Document organization 
>
>
>(1.a) The Rationale document should be retained to support implementors whose work requires that they understand the reasoning behind certain design choices.  The philosophy of IDNA2008 relies strongly on the ability of registries (especially those of top-level domains) to properly constrain the choice of labels even if they are composed of characters that are protocol valid.  (R.1)
>
>(1.b) While there has been debate about whether or not the content of the Rationale document should contain normative material, it seems expedient to agree on the content of Rationale for Proposed Standard without attempting to separate it into multiple parts. Therefore, it appears that the WG consensus is that: The normative material (definitions) should be retained in Rationale.
>
>A YES means you concur with the consensus statements above.
>
>The alternative is:
>
>- The normative material should be removed from Rationale and extracted to a separate document (for example Terms and Concepts) even if this lengthens the WG's target dates for an unknown period of time.  Note that there may be controversy about what material is normative and what is not; that is a separate consensus issue and may also take an unknown period of time to resolve   (R.2)
>
>
>NOTE NEW BUSINESS ADDRESS AND PHONE
>Vint Cerf
>Google
>1818 Library Street, Suite 400
>Reston, VA 20190
>202-370-5637
><mailto:vint at google.com>vint at google.com
>
>
>
>
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#-#-#  Martin J. Du"rst, Assoc. Professor, Aoyama Gakuin University
#-#-#  http://www.sw.it.aoyama.ac.jp       mailto:duerst at it.aoyama.ac.jp