On Sun, Mar 17, 2024 at 12:26 PM Pete Resnick <resnick=40episteme.net@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:
That leaves the "deadlines are useful" reason. And that's a perfectly
good reason, on a WG-by-WG basis, to allow chairs to close the
submission for their WGs if they want to impose a deadline. But it
doesn't justify shutting the queue for all WGs (some of which might not
be meeting f2f) or all documents (some of which might not be associated
with any WG or RG), or all chairs (some of whom might have good reasons
for a late add).
Your email and mine crossed in flight, but I agree.
(During a chat last night, Barry reminded me that when a change was
proposed several years ago, some chairs objected to the change because
they did not want the responsibility to allow exceptions and instead
wanted it to be an AD override so they could claim powerlessness to
insistent authors. I find such an argument a sign of complete
dysfunction.)
+1.
Indeed, even talking in terms of a "posting cutoff" is a mistake. If
mailing list discussion within the moratorium period comes to consensus
(with text) on a particular issue in a document, that is just as
problematic (or not) in keeping everyone on the same page preparing for
f2f discussions. Does that mean that we should have an IETF-wide 2-week
moratorium on mailing list discussions before f2f meetings? Of course
not (I hope). But some chairs may wish to say, "On issue X, let's close
discussion on the list until the f2f meeting, as I think a more
interactive discussion (perhaps with people with
Transport/Security/I18N/whatever expertise present) would be more
helpful." And that would be fine. Again, let's discuss what we actually
want to have happen, and then decide if we need some grand principle or
rule imposed, at an IETF/Area/WG level, for that and what tooling (if
any) we need to make it happen.
So I agree, the discussion probably needs to be re-framed, because it used to be easy to establish constraints to meet the perceived pre-meeting review goals, but now, not so much.
-MSK, solo
