now that we know that the secretariat keeps track of drafts that claim
to obsolete another draft, we could make this Real Simple:
drafts that say they obsolete another draft get the later deadline.
Harald (who won't have to decide that)
That would only work if it was "said" in metadata that can be automatically verified.
Today, this procedure (letting one I-D obsolete another) is carried out by the secretariat, manually. I believe the verification step consists of making sure the draft name is spelled correctly.
In an automated submission tool, we would have to have this be part of the submission to the tool, of course.
Please correct me if I'm wrong, but it seems like we were solving at least three problems with the I-D cutoff dates, which were:
- Most important - we expect people to read the drafts before discussing them at face-to-face meetings, and thought that considering drafts submitted this morning didn't give working groups enough time to do necessary homework before having really confused and confusing discussions
- There is a blizzard of draft submissions, both new and updated drafts, in the two weeks or so before a cutoff - I believe the statistic from the last few IETFs is that something like a third to half the IDs submitted between two meetings are submitted during those two weeks
- Related to the second problem, in the dawn of time, the secretariat's ability to process submitted drafts from a meeting location was limited (so having the flood of drafts arrive for manual processing at the exact time when their ability to do manual processing was at its lowest seemed wrong)
Is it just possible that a draft cutoff is no longer necessary to solve any of these problems?
For the first (I would argue, "the real") problem - 2418 says
7.1. Session documents
All relevant documents to be discussed at a session should be
published and available as Internet-Drafts at least two weeks before
a session starts. Any document which does not meet this publication
deadline can only be discussed in a working group session with the
specific approval of the working group chair(s). Since it is
important that working group members have adequate time to review all
documents, granting such an exception should only be done under
unusual conditions.
So, if a working group follows the "IETF Working Group Guidelines and Procedures", it doesn't matter whether we have a draft cutoff or not.
The second/third problem goes away for automated submissions, because it matters much less how many drafts are submitted (for any reasonable number of drafts) or when they are submitted.
Please remind me what problem we will be solving by closing down an automated submissions mechanism for a total of four weeks during each IETF cycle?
(For extra credit, explain how working groups that choose to blow off 2418 and consider Internet Drafts that were announced on working group mailing lists with pointers to private websites - you know who you are - are affected by the draft cutoff :-)
It seems to me that the questions of approval for initial submissions of working group drafts, and of draft revision history, should be solved without assuming a draft cutoff at all.
See you in Minneapolis,
Spencer
_______________________________________________ Ietf@xxxxxxxx https://www1.ietf.org/mailman/listinfo/ietf