--On Friday, October 11, 2024 08:53 +1300 Brian E Carpenter <brian.e.carpenter@xxxxxxxxx> 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. > > When I was a Gen-ART reviewer it was fairly clear that telechat > reviews > had two properties: > > 1. They were public. > > 2. They were really supposed to be saying either "All my previous > IETF Last Call comments have been dealt with" or "The following > IETF Last Call comments have not been dealt with: ...". > > If they go outside those boundaries, yes, there could be a problem. Brian, Since you have switched the lists, I'm concerned about the "public" part but don't know if our definitions are the same. Part of what set me off --nearly separate from the datatracker timing glitch-- was noticing that according to the datatracker [1] the Last Call on draft-ietf-emailcore-rfc5321bis-31 closed today (California version) and will close in under three hours (23:59 UTC version). So far, the number of directorate/area reviews posted is zero. IIR, other that an IANA concern, the number of postings about that document to the list during Last Call has been around twice that. Now, while I hope that means that the WG, its leadership, and Murray can smile happily and take a collective bow about having gotten all issues addressed before Last Call started (we certainly tried), it raises an interesting problem. Supposed those directorate/area reviews, including the one assigned in the last 24 hours, start rolling in on Monday. Certainly they would be "public" in the sense that the portion of the community that follows the Last Call list would see them. That is far more public than a presentation to the IESG during their review even though people who are particularly interested (and in sufficiently convenient time zones) could listen to the IESG meeting. But they are not public in the sense that the community could comment on whatever the reviews say -- to agree and cheer, to disagree and protest, or anything in between. And, should the author(s) or WG have comments on the reviews or whatever might be posted in response for them, their is no time for those responses within the Last Call period. At that point, the IESG has a choice: they could proceed without public feedback on the directorate/area review(s), they could informally extend the Last Call period by declining to put the document on the agenda until the discussion died down, or they could more formally extend the Last Call. In the first case, those reviews become, from my perspective, non-public. The others involve elements of unfairness to anyone who counted on the document finishing Last Call on the advertised dates and moving forward, especially anyone who had set aside time in the final week of the Last Call and subsequent few days to respond to any comments. They would also make a DoS attack on document approval by the careful timing and sequencing of comments should any small cluster of people feel motivated to do that. And so, yes there could be a problem. I hope it remains mostly hypothetical, but it is probably worth considering. best, john
