Normative references (was: Re: Killing old/slow groups-transition thinking)

[Brian E Carpenter]

Frank Kastenholz wrote:
> 
> At 03:00 PM 12/13/2002 +0100, Brian E Carpenter wrote:
> >John,
> >
> >In the RFC Ed queue I find 33 documents in the REF state, i.e.
> >stuck waiting for a normative reference. That's out of just over
> >60 documents which appear to be the standards/RFC track (that count
> >is a little hard to establish).
> >
> >So, this is a fairly significant problem, although I can't deduce
> >its effect on queuing time from the data. And fairly clearly,
> >those 33 documents have all left the IESG.
> 
> I don't know how you can say that.
> One data point does not a trend make...

True enough, but the fact that about half the current
batch are stuck on references is nevertheless a strong
indicator that we have a feature.

> How long have the documents been sitting there?

This you can see in the queue. Between zero and 10 months.

> What document(s) are they waiting for?

This you can see in the queue. 

> Why are those documents late?

That would be hard to determine without 33 separate investigations.
But I sampled 10 of the 33 cases; 9 of them are waiting for
documents that are not in the RFC Ed queue; the 10th is waiting
for a document in AUTH state (holding for author action).

> How long till the one's they are waiting for pop out?

This you can see in the tealeaves.

> What has been the historical size and shape of the REF queue?

Good question. I don't know whether the RFC Ed has enough history
to discover that. The IETF could certainly request it to be tracked
in future. Harald?

  Brian