--On Sunday, February 13, 2022 17:41 -0500 Michael Richardson
<mcr+ietf@xxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:
>
> Brian E Carpenter <brian.e.carpenter@xxxxxxxxx> wrote:
> > Having a non-WG-Chair as shepherd is particularly useful
> if one, or > even both, chairs are authors of the draft in
> question. In that case it > avoids a tricky conflict of
> interest. In other cases it simply spreads > the workload,
> if a WG has many documents reaching maturity at the same >
> time.
>
> My view is that the most valuable thing is that it exposes
> more people to the process. They become possible WG chair
> candidates, if not in that WG, then perhaps another.
>
> I would really like to find a way to raise the profile of the
> shepherd, and make it something that people aspire to.
One easy step, which assorted authors have, IIR, done at their
discretion, is that, especially when the shepherd is not a WG
chair, simply add them to the Acknowledgments for the document
with that particular designation, e.g., Thanks to <name> for
acting as Shepherd and assisting in moving this document through
the system. It wouldn't be a bad idea to add the shepherd
name(s) to the RFC Editor datebase for published documents (in
addition to the line in the datatracker display for the I-Ds)
either. And someone might look at the Nomcom questionnaires and
similar places where experience as a shepherd might be more
explicitly asked about.
Of course, any or all of that could be done by convention and
establishing the practice -- no updates to 4858 required.
john
