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

[Brian E Carpenter]

Yes, I agree that 24 or 33 documents waiting for other documents
is not necessarily a problem - that's why I also referred to it as
a "feature". If people are coding from the I-Ds anyway, it has no 
real impact.

   Brian

"Harrington, David" wrote:
> 
> Hi,
> 
> Let me point out that part of the 33 documents are the 9 SNMPv3 documents. It is unusual to have that many documents all moving at the same time, if I understand comments from the rfc-editor. Those 9 are ready to move forward now. So it could be argued that the queue really is only 24 documents. Given the number of documents we produce with REF depednencies, I think that's not too bad.
> 
> dbh
> ---
> David Harrington
> dbh@enterasys.com
> co-chair, IETF SNMPv3 WG
> 
> > -----Original Message-----
> > From: Brian E Carpenter [mailto:brian@hursley.ibm.com]
> > Sent: Friday, December 13, 2002 11:56 AM
> > To: Frank Kastenholz
> > Cc: John C Klensin; Harald Tveit Alvestrand;
> > problem-statement@alvestrand.no
> > Subject: Re: Normative references (was: Re: Killing old/slow
> > groups-transition thinking)
> >
> >
> > 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
> >