--On Wednesday, August 31, 2011 11:34 +0300 Jari Arkko <jari.arkko@xxxxxxxxx> wrote: > Eric, John, > >> Would having professional editors make a difference here? > >>> I know it is controversial, but there is at least one other >... > I think the existing Discuss criteria already says very > clearly that editorial comments cannot be blocking DISCUSSes. This issue drifts quickly from DISCUSS criteria into how we review, approve, and edit documents, but I think they are completely intertwined... so please forgive the apparent digression. > I see a lot of language feedback from IESG and directorate > reviews, but its rare to have them appear in the DISCUSSes. If > they do, its inappropriate, you should push back. And I'm sure > you will :-) Yes, but... First of all, a long list of "editorial comments" from one or more ADs can do fully as good a job of slowing a document down as a DISCUSS or two. And anyone smart enough to be on the IESG is more than capable of disguising what is really an editorial comment as a substantive issue that gets a DISCUSS. Part of the problem is that there are a whole series of judgment calls tangled up with this topic. For example: * If an AD says "this particular paragraph is really important to the specification and, after several readings, I can't tell what is actually means or whether a particular implementation would be conforming", that is a problem, certainly worthy of a "DISCUSS" (or, given Keith's typology, "NO until it is fixed". On the other hand, "this particular paragraph is important and it is much harder to understand than it should be, even though the intent is clear" is an editorial comment that should be non-blocking. I think we all know that the boundary between those two can be very thin and even a matter for debate. * I can't speak for others, but I'm often tired with a document for which I've got responsibility by the time I get it past the small revisions and nit-picking or WG LC and pre-IETF-LC comments from ADs. Faced with what I consider an inappropriate editorial comment or even an inappropriate DISCUSS, I have a choice between pushing back (thereby guaranteeing that I will have to deal with the document for additional weeks or months) or just making the requested changes and getting the document off my plate. I'm probably more stubborn about editorial matters than most people, but even I usually just give in. > Besides, we pay the RFC Editor a large amount of money every > year to do the editing. Documents need to be clear enough to > be understood, but the RFC editor can handle most of the > editorial problems. Yes, and I've been saying that, along with variations on "let them do their job" for years. But it introduces another set of issues. I don't think I'm giving away a secret by saying that they believe that their contracts and the way their performance is measured focus on pages of published output per month. They also believe that the IESG has told them things that amount to "minimal editing" or "copy editing only" on many occasions. Unless we can change things to shift from measuring what is easy to include a focus on quality improvements, the RFC Editor ends up in an impossible situation. >From a standardization perspective, it also isn't desirable to make lots of editorial changes post-approval. AUTH48 is a rather dangerous process because it is easy to make mistakes there that no one catches or, again, for an exhausted author to make "it is easier to let this go than to fight about it" decisions. One could, in principle, send all such documents back to a producing WG for final, pre-publication review but, in my experience, most of the people in most WGs get more exhausted by the document end-game than most authors (and most other participants want to reopen long-dead issues by questioning the language used to describe them). This is precisely why many SDOs use a two-stage vote in which the first vote approves the general concepts and technical content, the document then gets edited into final form by profession staff, and then the first and only actual approval vote occurs (possibly by a different body with a different mission). That wouldn't work well in the IETF... and not only because we have a more-than-one-step standards process. I think we could adopt a process in which a WG, or an AD, could look at a document before IETF LC and say "this is going to need a lot of editorial work before approval but the technical content looks ok, so let's hand it off to the RFC Editor now and get it cleaned up before a final WG review and IETF LC". But that has a lot of procedural and budgetary implications and I don't know if we are ready to deal with them. > (That being said, I've seen documents that were sent back > because they really were not understandable. Obviously there > is some bar under which you should not go, or the document > cannot advance at all. This happens more in WG stages than in > the IESG. But if you can't communicate your idea clearly then > I think it should be up to you to hire co-workers/editors to > help clarify your idea... not the IETF's problem, IMHO.) Agreed. See above. best, john _______________________________________________ Ietf mailing list Ietf@xxxxxxxx https://www.ietf.org/mailman/listinfo/ietf