Danger to the Net? (Re: My thoughts about the
problems of the IETF)
John C Klensin
john-ietf at jck.com
Mon Apr 21 21:48:09 CEST 2003
--On Monday, 21 April, 2003 17:13 -0700 Fred Baker
<fred at cisco.com> wrote:
> At 06:30 PM 4/21/2003 -0400, Steve Silverman wrote:
>> If less than 7 people have read and really understand an ID,
>> there is a good chance, that there
>> are significant undetected problems that may result in an AD
>> blockage or problems down the road.
>
> That suggests a procedural step: any working group that sends
> a document to the IESG should perhaps have a requirement to
> identify 7 people that read it.
>
> I'm not generally much for idiocy tests of that sort, but in
> this case one wonders...
Fred,
I don't know if seven is the right number, but I have believed
for some time that many steps in the approval process would be
improved if the submission process from a WG to the IESG
included a checklist document that, in turn, included
* An explicit statement from the WG chair that the WG
had reviewed the document and reached meaningful
consensus.
* Checkoff statements (one at a time) that the required
sections were present or explanations as to why they
were not required.
* Explicit signoff from several participants in the WG
that they had read the document, verified it against the
checkoff statements, and were of the opinion that the
document was technically competent, an adequate
definition, complete, and represented WG rough
consensus.
That "several" could reasonably be your "seven". And the notion
would be that, if the responsible AD, or the IESG, detected
document problems that this process should have identified and
didn't, we would have a list of names that could be held up for
public ridicule and as responsible for any ensuing delays.
Pretty hard-nosed, but there really is no excuse for asking an
AD to spend time reviewing WG output that has long-required
sections missing, that is not intelligible, or that no one has
really read.
john
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