Subject: Another document series?

From: Michael StJohns <[email-masked]>
Date: Tue, 30 Nov 2004 12:13:41 -0500

Folks -

I've recently been asked to review a number of works in progress related to 
restructuring and other similar things.  Those documents were liberally 
splattered with references to various 
IDs  (http://www.ietf.org/internet-drafts/draft-ietf-newtrk-cruft-00.txt, 
http://www.ietf.org/internet-drafts/draft-ietf-newtrk-repurposing-isd-00.txt, 
http://www.ietf.org/internet-drafts/draft-wasserman-iasa-bcp-01.txt 
etc).  Its unclear that either the work in progress or the cited drafts 
will ever be published as RFCs.  Its also unclear that this (restructuring 
etc) will be resolved within the 6 month lifetime of any given ID.  Its 
also unclear that we can afford to either have these expire, or continually 
resubmit them.  And finally, we NEED to have this set of documents as 
permanent archivable documents to maintain the historical record.

It seems to me that neither ID status nor RFC status are appropriate for 
these documents.  The ID series is, by design, ephemeral and generally not 
citeable.  The RFC series is stable and citeable, but the lead time for 
introducing an RFC is somewhat north of 30 days or more.

I hate to open Pandora's box, but what I think we need is a citable, stable 
document series that has a production lead time similar to that of the 
IDs.  I would probably limit this to the non-technical administrivia we've 
been recently inundated with.

*sigh*

Mike

_______________________________________________
Ietf mailing list
[email-masked]
https://www1.ietf.org/mailman/listinfo/ietf

---

From: Sam Hartman <[email-masked]>
Date: Tue, 30 Nov 2004 12:49:02 -0500

>>>>> "Michael" == Michael StJohns <[email-masked]> writes:

    Michael> It seems to me that neither ID status nor RFC status are
    Michael> appropriate for these documents.  The ID series is, by
    Michael> design, ephemeral and generally not citeable.  The RFC
    Michael> series is stable and citeable, but the lead time for
    Michael> introducing an RFC is somewhat north of 30 days or more.

    Michael> I hate to open Pandora's box, but what I think we need is
    Michael> a citable, stable document series that has a production
    Michael> lead time similar to that of the IDs.  I would probably
    Michael> limit this to the non-technical administrivia we've been
    Michael> recently inundated with.

    Michael> *sigh*

Please provide some justification.  You said that you needed these
things but you didn't really say why.  

I also don't understand how this is any different than work that goes
on in a lot of protocol working groups.

I'm particularly confused about why we would have documents that we
neither want to be long-lived but that we cannot be bothered to
resubmit every six months.  If we want the document to be long-lived,
what is wrong with RFC publication?

---

From: Harald Tveit Alvestrand <[email-masked]>
Date: Tue, 30 Nov 2004 18:49:47 +0100

--On tirsdag, november 30, 2004 12:13:41 -0500 Michael StJohns 
<[email-masked]> wrote:

> Folks -
>
> I've recently been asked to review a number of works in progress related
> to restructuring and other similar things.  Those documents were
> liberally splattered with references to various IDs
> (http://www.ietf.org/internet-drafts/draft-ietf-newtrk-cruft-00.txt,
> http://www.ietf.org/internet-drafts/draft-ietf-newtrk-repurposing-isd-00.
> txt, http://www.ietf.org/internet-drafts/draft-wasserman-iasa-bcp-01.txt
> will ever be published as RFCs.

The answer is yes-if-successful, yes-if-consensus, yes-with-namechange for 
those three particular documents. Not much different from the I-Ds of any 
given working group.

> Its also unclear that this
> (restructuring etc) will be resolved within the 6 month lifetime of any
> given ID.  Its also unclear that we can afford to either have these
> expire, or continually resubmit them.  And finally, we NEED to have this
> set of documents as permanent archivable documents to maintain the
> historical record.

Query: What purpose do you see the historical record as having?
I'm serious - "visibility to serious historians", "historical sunshine law" 
and "armoury for lawyers in court cases" are very different things to 
design for.

> these documents.  The ID series is, by design, ephemeral and generally
> not citeable.  The RFC series is stable and citeable, but the lead time
> for introducing an RFC is somewhat north of 30 days or more.

Optimist.... the current queue time (approval to publication) is closer to 
4 months for IETF standards track. The effort at speeding up the IESG 
approval process has had ripple effects :-(
(that's why the RFC Editor's 2006 budget shows a hefty increase, btw...)

> I hate to open Pandora's box, but what I think we need is a citable,
> stable document series that has a production lead time similar to that of
> the IDs.  I would probably limit this to the non-technical administrivia
> we've been recently inundated with.

Unfortunately, almost the same arguments can be made for anything that has 
received serious attention in the I-D series. See the NEWTRK discussion 
about "working group snapshot".

                    Harald

---

From: Michael StJohns <[email-masked]>
Date: Tue, 30 Nov 2004 13:39:06 -0500

>things but you didn't really say why.

I tend to disagree with you that I didn't say why, but here's some more:

Pick any one of a number of the current documents related to 
restructuring.  Do a topological sort on the publication 
dependencies.  (E.g. stable references for RFCs can't be IDs).  Now figure 
out whether this entire set of IDs will make it to RFC status. Further, 
figure the amount of bureaucratic cruft that will have to happen to bring 
this set to RFC status with the concomitant allocation of scarce resources.

The various restructuring documents that have been published as IDs tend to 
have a history that's important.  RFCs are published at a single point (the 
end point) in the life of an ID.  In this discussion, and in others, its 
important to know where we started, where we were along the way and where 
we ended up.  Sometimes that's embodied as a single document history, 
sometimes as a set of revisions to a document, and sometimes as a series of 
documents with different names, but parented by the same ideas.

The ID series can't track this in the manner it needs to be tracked due to 
its current ephemeral nature.

>on in a lot of protocol working groups.

Because in the protocol working groups, its the end product that is most 
important because that's what gets published as the RFC.  The IDs CAN be 
discarded at the end of the process because they become irrelevant.

RFCs are edited to a fare-thee-well - IDs are not.  We need something 
stable like an RFC that doesn't require the resource allocation of an RFC 
to get published.

Finally, the documents in the restructuring set are mostly individual or 
small group efforts, individual opinion rather than a group consensus of a 
WG.  The changes to those documents over time (e.g. the -01 -02 etc) tend 
not to be changes in meaning, but refinements of the original 
thesis.  Protocol RFCs reflect group consensus and tend to change somewhat 
drastically from initial idea to final publication.  (Broad generalization 
which tends to be more true than not - there are exceptions).

>what is wrong with RFC publication?

I want document A to be long lived, but I  don't want to wait  the 4 months 
(see Harald's note) to have it see the light of day because the discussions 
on A have to take place now.  That assumes that A can be published direct 
from creation, which isn't the case in the IETF.  Instead A has to be 
published as an ID first, before it can be published as an RFC.  Someone 
else comes along with document B that cites A.  B depends heavily on 
A.  And C and D and E.  B becomes very important and makes it to the point 
where we want to turn it into an RFC, in the mean time authors of A, C, D 
and E have dropped out of the process through sheer fatigue and decline to 
push their documents to RFC status.  Does B get published as an RFC by 
removing the cites for A, C, D and E or does some overworked volunteer pick 
up A, C, D and E to edit them?  What happens if the various authors decline 
permission to take these drafts forward?

This isn't as much of a problem in the protocol work side of things, but 
the web of documents so far on the restructuring is much broader than 
anything I can remember seeing for any of the work products of any of the WGs.

---

From: Eliot Lear <[email-masked]>
Date: Tue, 30 Nov 2004 20:01:47 +0100

Mike,

As the other co-author to
> http://www.ietf.org/internet-drafts/draft-ietf-newtrk-cruft-00.txt, 

> [...]Its unclear that either the work in progress or the cited drafts 
> will ever be published as RFCs.  Its also unclear that this 

I think the current cruft draft is best suited only as an I-D.  We are 
right now conducting a cruft experiment.  It is quite possible -- in 
fact darn near certain -- that we will need to update that draft based 
on the experiences of the old-standards mailing list, making the current 
draft, well, cruft.  Depending on the results of the experiment I think 
the WG could produce either an update to RFC 2026/3667/???? or an 
informational RFC.

Why is this not sufficient?  What is it you want to capture?

Eliot