----- Original Message ----- From: "Spencer Dawkins at IETF" <spencerdawkins.ietf@xxxxxxxxx> To: "Barry Leiba" <barryleiba@xxxxxxxxxxxx> Cc: <ietf@xxxxxxxx>; <iesg@xxxxxxxx>; "RFC Editor" <rfc-editor@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx> Sent: Tuesday, October 07, 2014 7:08 PM Just piling in after Barry here ... and speaking as the AD who had the most recent ¨draft on a telechat agenda with consensus = unknown¨, but I'm hardly the only one. The field in the tracker is labeled ¨consensus¨, which is ambiguous but actually means ¨IETF consensus¨. So, it should be set after IETF Last Call. A fair number of the documents I've processed already had it set to ¨yes¨ when they were publication-requested, so that means the shepherd/working group chairs thought it meant ¨working group consensus¨. I believe - but Barry would know - that we've requested that the field label be changed to ¨IETF Consensus¨ in the datatracker. (I know we talked about that, but I don't know whether we've made the request yet) <tp> What would be even more helpful would be, as in other systems I use, the ability to click on a field name and be taken to a help facility for the various values that can appear in a field. BUT ... it would only be worth doing if we have the resources to maintain such a system. I say that because the second biggest problem I have with the IETF website (after the denial of service caused by https:// :-( is incorrect links, that have not been updated as and when the website has been reorganised. I do not have the experience of website maintenance to know why this is a problem (just observe that it is, with both the IETF and other websites). Tom Petch </tp> Spencer On Tue, Oct 7, 2014 at 11:47 AM, Barry Leiba <barryleiba@xxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote: > > It's not true that no consensus is needed for a document just because > it's > > not a WG product. Anything that comes through the IETF stream (including > > AD-sponsored documents) need to reflect consensus. > > That's generally true the vast majority of the time, though there are > exceptions for some Experimental or Informational documents, which is > why the flag is there in the first place. > > We do occasionally produce documents that describe proprietary > protocols or that republish outside documents in the IETF stream. We > try to do those in the Independent stream instead, but it's not always > the best or right thing. When they're published in the IETF stream, > the point is that we have consensus to publish them, but we might not > have consensus on the protocol that's described. In those cases, > we'll use "No" for the "Consensus" flag. > > Barry > >