Thomas, et al, Please see one (set of) comment(s) below... -- Eric Gray Principal Engineer Ericsson > -----Original Message----- > From: ietf-bounces@xxxxxxxx [mailto:ietf-bounces@xxxxxxxx] On > Behalf Of Thomas Narten > Sent: Friday, March 07, 2008 2:18 PM > To: Lakshminath Dondeti > Cc: ietf@xxxxxxxx; iesg@xxxxxxxx > Subject: Re: IONs & discuss criteria > > Lakshminath Dondeti <ldondeti@xxxxxxxxxxxx> writes: > > > I have reviewed documents as a Gen-ART reviewer (during > Brian's tenure I > > think), sec-dir reviewer and also provided IETF LC comments on some > > documents. As a reviewer, I am not sure whether I was > expecting answers > > all those times. I am pretty sure I have not always stated > whether or > > not the answers are satisfactory. > > On this one point. > > IMO, one of the biggest causes of problems (and most under-appreciated > process weakness) in the IETF (and any consensus based organization > for that matter) is poor handling of review comments. > > The ideal way to deal with them is to always respond, and to get an "I > am satisfied with your response" to close the thread. Anything else > runs the risk of: > > - author says "I dealt with those comments in the revised ID", with > the reviewer saying "Nope, I was ignored". > > - author says "I dealt with those comments in the revised ID", and > this actually was the case, except that they accidentally missed > one or two important issues. Reviewer is left wondering "was I > blown off, or was this just an oversight, or..." > > - author thinking they are "done", because they "responded on the > list". But, no changes in the document and/or reviewer is still not > happy. > > - reviewer having invested a not-insignificant amount of time doing a > quality review feeling "what's the point", which doesn't help to > motivate a volunteer organization. This is especially problematic > from the cross-area review perspective. Actually both of these last points are especially problematic from a generalist review perspective. Those of us doing Gen-ART reviews can not possibly subscribe to every list and it is sometimes (often?) the case that some of the review comments are discussed at great length on the mailing list - completely (though unintentionally) leaving the commenter out of it. In addition to raising the "what's the point" attitude flag, this can even lead to the feeling that the comments actually went black-hole surfing, possibly even leading to those harrassing trouble tickets for lost E-Mail our IT people love to see so much. This is very disturbing given the non-insignificant amount of effort occasionally involved in just trying to understand a draft enough to make (presumed) intelligent comments about it and not even getting a sense of whether or not you actually succeeded. Minimally, as one of the people to whom that has happened, it would be nice if at least an initial ("thanks for the review and comments") mail included the commenter, in every case. Even a "I wish you would stop bothering us with all of these silly comments" would be a response. Of course, I presonally would prefer that that sort of response was not addressed to the list, with or without me on it. :-) By the way, I agree with the comments below on issue tracker usage, and I feel there must have been some significant, noticeable, improvements in draft processing since they started being used. Perhaps with more (and wider) education on what is available, the gains may be even more appreciable. > > Repeat above several times and intersperse with long periods of time > where nothing happens on a document. You now have an idea of why it > seems to take a long time to get documents through the system. > > One of the reasons I'm such a fan of issue trackers is that it tends > to remove a lot of the above stuff by simply not allowing stuff to > fall through the cracks. Sure, trackers have overhead and are overkill > in some cases. But if one could somehow analyze the number of > documents that have been delayed for some time due to poor handling of > review comments... > > Thomas > _______________________________________________ > IETF mailing list > IETF@xxxxxxxx > https://www.ietf.org/mailman/listinfo/ietf > _______________________________________________ IETF mailing list IETF@xxxxxxxx https://www.ietf.org/mailman/listinfo/ietf