Info/exptl RFCs [Re: Killing old/slow groups - transition thinking)

John C Klensin john-ietf@jck.com
Tue, 10 Dec 2002 11:41:35 -0500


--On Tuesday, 10 December, 2002 15:27 +0100 Harald Tveit
Alvestrand <harald@alvestrand.no> wrote:

> At the risk of sounding defensive....
> 
> --On tirsdag, desember 10, 2002 09:06:41 -0500 John C Klensin
> <john-ietf@jck.com> wrote:
> 
>> 
>> 	(i) The IESG has taken it upon itself to do _editorial_
>> 	reviews on these documents, sometimes sitting on them
>> 	for weeks or months because some AD says "I have
>> 	comments which I want to write up" and then getting
>> 	comments that involve editorial nitpicking or simple
>> 	disagreements with the author's presentation, rather
>> 	than standards coordination.  It is hard to sympathize
>> 	with IESG's delaying other work when IESG time is being
>> 	spent this way.
> 
> I am trying to deal with the slowness (about 20 documents were
> seemingly"lost in the system"; I am kicking them as hard as I
> know how. Some of them apparently DO have real issues
> associated with them).

See below.  But, as I read the relevant documents, the IESG has
no authority to stop or hold and informational document because
it doesn't like the presentation, the substantive content, or
even, e.g., the contents of a "security considerations" section.
The two areas in which you can stop and hold things involve
end-runs on the standards process and documents that contain
protocol or operational suggestions or implications that you
believe would be damaging to the Internet (and the
"draft-higgs..." example you refer to clearly fell into that
category, at least in the IESG's plausible judgment).

Anyone can send comments to an author; I hope the author will
pay suitable attention.   Anyone can send comments about
appropriateness for publication, or suggestions for changes, to
the RFC editor and I hope that the RFC Editor will pay suitable
attention.  But for an IESG member to take a position that, in
practical terms, amounts to "I have editorial comments (or some
unidentified comments) and they are so important that this
document gets blocked until I get around to writing them up, or
until the author accepts my comments" is, IMO, an abuse of
authority of fairly serious proportions.

Again, remember that we are talking about information documents
here.  Proposed standards-track documents are another matter
entirely, and some experimental ones fall into a grey area.

>> 	(ii) The IESG has added looking for protocol and
>> 	operational suggestions that would be damaging to the
>> 	network, if deployed, to the "standards coordination"
>> 	item.  I personally think this was reasonable, but it
>> 	has added to the workload and been used as the excuse
>> 	for long delays, consideration, and editorial review.
>> 	In years past, we counted on the RFC Editor to catch and
>> 	filter these sorts of things and assumed that really
>> 	stupid and dangerous ideas were better dealt with by
>> 	RFCs that refuted them rather than by disclaimers and
>> 	arm-wrestling about their precise text as a condition
>> 	for publication.
> 
> I think that's appropriate for the IESG to do.
> The last ones I remember in this class were the Higgs "we
> should bless alternate DNS roots" documents.
> 
> http://www.ietf.org/IESG/Announcements/draft-higgs-root-defs.a
> nn gives the details. This is 1 1/2 years ago - it's not
> something we do a lot.

I agree it is worth doing.  I also believe that the RFC Editor
should be stopping many off-the-wall documents and documents
that would be problems for the network  --as things they would
not publish anyway-- without the IESG getting involved.  And I
think it would be sensible to see if the role of catching and
filtering these things --which are internet-compatibility and
internet architecture issues, not standards-related issues
specifically-- can be moved out of the IESG, whether to some
process reporting to the RFC Editor (like an editorial board, if
needed) but responsible to the IETF community, or to the IAB, or
elsewhere.  The _one_ area in which the IESG has special and
unique expertise involves conflicts with standards and ongoing
IETF work.  Review for that purpose should, IMO, stay with the
IESG, but should not take long (rarely longer than the RFC
Editor's nominal two weeks).

>> 	(iii) The IESG has established a de facto procedure
>> 	(undocumented and with no real rules) for their
>> 	reviewing and approving individual submission
>> 	informational/experimental documents before those
>> 	documents get near the RFC Editor.  They have then,
>> 	apparently, told the RFC Editor that such documents take
>> 	priority over anything submitted to the RFC Editor
>> 	directly (at least the RFC Editor believes that to be
>> 	the case).
> 
> I don't believe such a procedure exists.
> What can confuse the issue is that we pass some documents as
> WG documents that are *named* as if they were individual
> submissons. And the documents produced by the IESG or the IAB
> *do* get priority, and *do* enter the process without RFC
> Editor review before I* approval. But if there has been a case
> of a truly individual document being end-run around the RFC
> Editor review in the past year, I'd like to hear its name.

Harald, either we are using different terminology and getting
confused by it, or one of us is in a different reality from the
other.

I am not talking about WG documents, no matter how disguised.
And I'm fully aware of documents "produced" by the IESG and IAB
(although I would have described the procedure for IAB documents
a bit differently) and the procedures for them.

But for at least the last three years, several ADs have been
telling individual submitters that the only efficient way to get
an individual submission document processed is to send it to
them (or some other AD), not to the RFC Editor, and get an AD to
"sponsor" it.  The most recent incident of this of which I'm
aware has occurred within the last two weeks and does not
concern a document that I've been involved in trying to move
into the publication process (although I'm a contributor to it)
or about which I've had any correspondence with ADs or the RFC
Editor.

If you think that violates procedures, please advise me as to
whether you would like to endorse recall letters to the ISOC
President.

The RFC Editor has also received this message from the IESG, or
at least from IESG members.  At least as of a few months ago,
they were responding to people who questioned the rate at which
they were doing initial review on documents by telling them
that, if they wanted anything to happen quickly, they should
submit the documents through the IESG, rather than directly to
the RFC Editor.

Now, this is arguably not an "end-run around the RFC Editor
review", since the RFC Editor eventually gets to review it, and
can presumably push back.   But is an end-run around the queuing
model, and the timeouts that are supposed to go with it, and the
principle that these documents go to the RFC Editor first, and
so on.  And it creates a two-track system for individual
submissions of informational or experimental documents: 

	* those who follow the written procedures, submit to the
	RFC Editor, and trust to whatever follows and
	
	* those who get the word, find a friendly AD, and get
	the document processed through the IESG first.

On the theory that we really shouldn't have undocumented
procedures that are available only to people who can enlist or
recruit IESG members, I have been asking the IESG and RFC Editor
to clarify this situation, and straighten it out, fairly
regularly since I became fully aware of it (again) in July.  My
efforts have included several notes to you and a few
conversations with you.  Obviously I have not been communicating
clearly enough.  What would you suggest?

    john