In message <01LP9982FXHW00004T@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>, Ned Freed writes: >> From where I sat, the problem was trying to ensure that a WG thought >> about an issue. Neither mandatory material nor checkoff boxes >> accomplish that, but I think the former is often more useful because >> material in an I-D is visible to the entire WG. > >I disagree completely and think you have this exactly backwards. Mandatory >material would only help if people actually think about what goes in it - whic >h >they don't. Rather, they think about it as "another something we have to do to >get past the IESG" and deal with it by spending as little time on it as >possible. Sure -- I saw a lot of that when I was on the IESG. Too often, I would say "in your Security Considerations section, you need to think about X, Y, and Z" -- and I'd get back a new document saying "think about X, Y, and Z". >Even worse, the presence of a section that says "these are all the IANA >considerations" or "there are no IANA considerations here" is likely to cause >reviewers to assume that someone has already checked for IANA actions. This >will lead to more omissions, not less. > >And in fact there has already been at least one example of this happening. The >document draft-ietf-lemonade-mms-mapping-04.txt is now in the RFC Editor's >queue. It's IANA considerations section says "no IANA actions". Alas, the >document defines any number of new header fields that need to be placed in the >appropriate header regsitry. > >That IANA considerations section sure helped a lot, didn't it? You can lead a horse to water.... I agree -- there are no panaceas here. It's a question of what will help the most, not what will solve the problem. > >Like it or not, careful reviews and review checklists, while quited flawed in >their own right, are the best tool we have. When I was on the IESG I had my own >private review checklist; it was the only thing I found that worked. Such reviews are certainly necessary. The question is this: what policy is most likely to reduce the incidence of such things? We'll never eliminate it. --Steven M. Bellovin, http://www.cs.columbia.edu/~smb _______________________________________________ Ietf@xxxxxxxx https://www1.ietf.org/mailman/listinfo/ietf