Hi John,
Thanks to Brian for moving the thread and changing the subject line.
At 12:53 PM 10-10-2024, Brian E Carpenter wrote:
[moved from tools-discuss]
On 11-Oct-24 08:06, John C Klensin wrote:
On Thursday, October 10, 2024 13:23 -0500 Robert Sparks
<rjsparks@xxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:
<snip>
The practices of directorates continuing to change assignments or
provide comments after last call is something I'll leave to the
IESG to steer. Note, however, that almost all of the directorates
also provide telechat reviews, not just last-call reviews.
(That brings us to an issue that I thought to mention in my earlier
note, decided against it, and may regret mentioning now. If this is
worth pursuing, it should probably be on the IETF list, not here.
At least in principle, there is a difference between (i) Last Call as
a community discussion mechanism whose effect is to inform the IESG
about community consensus and (ii) Last Call as a mechanism to feed
information, opinions, and other advice into the IESG so the ADs can
determine what they think is the right decision for the Internet. If
those directorate/area reviews are given privileged status -- input
into the telechats that ordinary IETF participants don't get, more
flexibility about deadlines, etc. -- then the "treat this like any
other review" boilerplate of most of those reviews becomes a joke or
worse. It would be somewhat different if those really were
directorate or area reviews -- reviews that were written (or
finalized) only after specific discussion about the document within
that area or directorate and that represented consensus in that
group. But they often are not -- they are more often the opinions of
an individual who comes up in rotation or draws a short straw. If
the latter is the case, the community should probably be insisting
that reviews that claim to be (or are treated as) representative of a
group rather than that of the author as an individual be posted
several days before a Last Call ends so that other IETF participants
can comment on whatever is said.
So telling me/us that directorates provide telechat reviews in
addition to or instead of Last Call reviews is a source of concern,
not comfort.
I was a bit confused by the mention of "telechat reviews". I guess
that it means having a review ready before the IESG evaluation. The
practice I was familiar with was for the review to be public and for
it to be sent to the relevant area mailing list. The subscribers to
that mailing list had the ability to complain if there had any
concerns. Those reviews were for the Area Directors instead of the
entire IESG. The practice was for the authors to have adequate time
to address the review. There is some administrative work to get all
that lined up. A review can only represent the views of the person
writing it. Anything else might cause administrative complications.
Last Call reviews were different from those reviews. For example, I
would say "no issue" for a draft from IPv6 if it is not be relevant
to what is usually discussed within the Area.
I got to appreciate the effort of each of the reviewers who
volunteered to do the reviews. The results of their work was 100%
coverage of the drafts that gets to IESG evaluation.
Regards,
S. Moonesamy
