I am just revisiting the RFC with a new non-Chair Shepherd in my WG (ECRIT). IMO, It's holding up well other than the antiquated sample questionnaire.. I'd be happy to work with someone on removing the sample and revising a bit.
My co-chair Randall and I expect the Shepherd to do the whole thing, with mentoring from us where needed, and (crucial) cooperation and support from the authors. We made sure the authors were aware of Dwight (the Shepherd) and that's been fine. The writeup questionnaire was a great learning experience - it's got a lot in it and done right (which it was), there's IETF gold there.
Agreeing with some things in the thread: as Michael, Brian and others said, they help IETF train potential future Chair (and recruit) and I love this. But also they are needed multipliers, because Chairs have lots docs in flight at once and frequently have several or lots of WGs. The Shepherd can focus on the doc process fine points with close attention. The Chair roles of leading the WG and ensuring quality review have to be done before the Shepherd starts work with the Writeup (before the Chair can ask for publication). I think everyone knows this last point, but reminding people if they don't.
As has been mentioned, the Shepherd role and the Writeup are well integrated in the datatracker now and have been for a few years. I wrote up a document a few years back for the WG and that was the case.
I'd love to see nomcom ask about shepherding experience, what a great idea. As far as I can tell, it's hard to search the datatracker for a person's Writeups, but the candidate could supply them and the nomcom could get from people what they well were good and challenging ones to take a look at - you can link.
One possible integration gap: is the shepherd role included in the draft email aliases? I think maybe not.
Allison
On Mon, Feb 14, 2022 at 11:17 Joel M. Halpern <jmh@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:
When I as chair appoint a non-chair shepherd I expect them to do the
whole job. And they, and the authors, generally do. As chair, I do
keep an eye on things to help if needed.
Yours,
Joel
On 2/14/2022 11:03 AM, Salz, Rich wrote:
> My original note wasn't clear, sorry for the confusion.
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> RFC 4858 talk in detail about writing the shepherd document, and then working with the various parties to get the document through the AD, IESG, IETF LC, and IANA reviews. I was asking if the *everything but the document part* is obsolete. Does anyone have recent examples (use your own definition of recent; mine is like five years) where the *document shepherd* guided the draft through all of the other parts, as described in the RFC?
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