Subject: Re: Call for Comment: RFC 4693 experiment

From: "Frank Ellermann" <[email-masked]>
Date: Wed, 16 Jan 2008 21:30:19 +0100

The IESG wrote:
 
> Have IONs been valuable?  Should we continue to make use of
> this mechanism?

Yes and yes.  I like them even better if they are published
in a plain text format similar to Internet-Drafts.  The IETF
tool "rfcmarkup" can produce sound HTML and diffs for I-Ds.

 Frank

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---

From: Brian E Carpenter <[email-masked]>
Date: Thu, 17 Jan 2008 10:11:39 +1300

On 2008-01-17 09:30, Frank Ellermann wrote:
> Yes and yes.  

I'm biased, having helped to start this experiment, but my only
criticism is that we haven't made enough use of it (i.e. there
are a number of IETF procedural documents that are ripe for
republishing as IONs). So, +1 for yes and yes.

> I like them even better if they are published

There are two formats allowed for IONS - html and plain text
(but not both for the same document). However, almost all of
those published so far previously existed as xml2rfc source,
so they've been IONized and htmlized using xml2rfc. If you
value the hyperlinks (which I do, especially in a case like
http://www.ietf.org/IESG/content/ions/ion-procdocs.html), it
seems more logical to use xml2rfc than to have rfcmarkup
guess the links.

In the interests of science, I processed ion-procdocs through
xml2rfc to plain text. The result is at
http://www.cs.auckland.ac.nz/~brian/ion-procdocs.txt
(There is one very minor formatting glitch that I didn't debug.)

Then I processed the txt through rfcmarkup:
http://www.cs.auckland.ac.nz/~brian/ion-procdocs-rfcmarkup.htm

It would be interesting to know which of the above three versions
people prefer.

  Brian

---

From: "Frank Ellermann" <[email-masked]>
Date: Thu, 17 Jan 2008 00:23:52 +0100

Brian E Carpenter wrote:

> It would be interesting to know which of the above three
> versions people prefer.

Yes.  <http://tools.ietf.org/html/ion-procdocs> is what you
have as "rfcmarkup", I knew this because I link to it on a
"tools fan page" :-)  I'm now using "popular" browsers, the
direct xml2rfc HTML output is nice, but with an old browser
(no CSS) it's horrible.  Disable CSS to see what I mean.

 Frank

---

From: Spencer Dawkins <[email-masked]>
Date: Wed, 16 Jan 2008 22:30:33 -0600

Dear IESG,

The call for comments didn't include a destination for those comments, but 
since people are already responding on-list, I agree with Brian. My only 
suggestion is to use IONs more frequently.

I hope that the upcoming "successful BOF" RFC is also published as an ION, 
for example, because I hope that there will be updates that reflect the 
recently-approved RFC 5111 ("Experiment in Exploratory Group Formation 
within the Internet Engineering Task Force (IETF)").

Thanks,

Spencer

---

From: The IESG <[email-masked]>
Date: Wed, 16 Jan 2008 14:41:09 -0500

RFC 4693, Section 4 says:

> This experiment is expected to run for a period of 12 months,
> starting from the date of the first ION published using this
> mechanism. At the end of the period, the IESG should issue a
> call for comments from the community, asking for people to state
> their agreement to one of the following statements (or a
> suitable reformulation thereof):

According to http://www.ietf.org/IESG/content/ions/
the first ION was published 12-Jan-2007.  This means the experiment
ended last Saturday, and it's time for the IESG to issue the
call for comments.

Please tell us what you think about the experiment.  Have IONs been
valuable?  Should we continue to make use of this mechanism?

---

From: Fred Baker <[email-masked]>
Date: Thu, 17 Jan 2008 11:21:28 -0800

On Jan 16, 2008, at 11:41 AM, The IESG wrote:
>> mechanism. At the end of the period, the IESG should issue a call  
>> for comments from the community, asking for people to state their  
>> agreement to one of the following statements (or a suitable  
>> reformulation thereof):
>
> According to http://www.ietf.org/IESG/content/ions/ the first ION  
> was published 12-Jan-2007.  This means the experiment ended last  
> Saturday, and it's time for the IESG to issue the call for comments.
>

In my opinion, they are over-rated.

The options in the RFC are:
>    1.  This document series has proved useful, and should be made
>        permanent
>
>    2.  This document series is less useful than the equivalent
>        information in RFCs and informal Web pages, and should be
>        abandoned
>
>    3.  We cannot decide yet; the experiment should continue

I would argue that (1) has not been shown. Several IONs have been  
produced, but I don't see people referring to them. It looks like it  
is being treated as a lightweight way to publish something a lot like  
an RFC, and I'm not sure why the proper response to our present  
situation shouldn't be to figure out what we once had - a lightweight  
way to publish an RFC.

Whether we can say that we know for sure that the experiment has been  
conclusive, I'm not sure I know. If the community feels that a second  
year is necessary to really conclude that, I would be willing to see  
that happen. But from my perspective, the lack of current utilization  
(not in terms of producing them, which is slowly happening, but of  
referring to them and referring others to them) leads me in the  
direction of (2).

---

From: Dan York <[email-masked]>
Date: Thu, 17 Jan 2008 14:33:27 -0500

I have to agree with Fred here:

On Jan 17, 2008, at 2:21 PM, Fred Baker wrote:
> produced, but I don't see people referring to them. It looks like  
> it is being treated as a lightweight way to publish something a lot  
> like an RFC, and I'm not sure why the proper response to our  
> present situation shouldn't be to figure out what we once had - a  
> lightweight way to publish an RFC.

I've been on various IETF mailing lists for a year or two now and  
I've never seen any reference to these ION documents. Obviously there  
must have been and I must have missed it... but I've not had other  
people point me to them, either.  For instance, at IETF 70, I agreed  
to take minutes for one of the sessions and when I asked if there was  
any preferred format, no one pointed me to this ION: http:// 
www.ietf.org/IESG/content/ions/ion-agenda-and-minutes.html

Have now learned of them by this email exchange, some of the  
documents look both interesting and useful, but I'd agree with Fred  
that in order to call the series "successful" there really need to be  
more people pointing to them and using them.

My 2 cents,
Dan

-- 
Dan York, CISSP, Director of Emerging Communication Technology
Office of the CTO    Voxeo Corporation     [email-masked]
Phone: +1-407-455-5859  Skype: danyork  http://www.voxeo.com
Blogs: http://blogs.voxeo.com  http://www.disruptivetelephony.com

Bring your web applications to the phone.
Find out how at http://evolution.voxeo.com

---

From: Brian E Carpenter <[email-masked]>
Date: Fri, 18 Jan 2008 09:04:15 +1300

On 2008-01-18 08:33, Dan York wrote:
> I've been on various IETF mailing lists for a year or two now and I've
> never seen any reference to these ION documents. Obviously there must
> have been and I must have missed it... but I've not had other people
> point me to them, either.  For instance, at IETF 70, I agreed to take
> minutes for one of the sessions and when I asked if there was any
> preferred format, no one pointed me to this ION:
> http://www.ietf.org/IESG/content/ions/ion-agenda-and-minutes.html
> 
> Have now learned of them by this email exchange, some of the documents
> look both interesting and useful, but I'd agree with Fred that in order
> to call the series "successful" there really need to be more people
> pointing to them and using them.

That's undoubtedly true - in fact they would need to be the normal
way we post procedural stuff to the web site (i.e. things like
http://www.ietf.org/ietf/1id-guidelines.html should be IONs).
If we are to make IONs permanent, I'd want to see them better
integrated in the web site as a whole, rather than being hidden
in a corner at http://www.ietf.org/IESG/content/ions.html.

Just as a reminder, the idea was to have something *easier and
cheaper* than RFCs but more organized than arbitrary web pages.
Fred might note that "cheaper" with his IAOC hat on ;-).

    Brian

---

From: Harald Alvestrand <[email-masked]>
Date: Thu, 17 Jan 2008 23:27:13 +0100

Being the RFC author, I'm naturally very much interested.....

still, I'll observe that the procedure that seemed most important to me,
which was getting new versions out whenever they were needed, has been
exercised exactly once: in http://www.ietf.org/IESG/content/ions/dated/,
the only document in 2 versions is Brian's "procdocs" document.

So the 3rd option in the evaluation process:

might be an option to seriously consider.

(This of course has some disadvantages - for instance, we have
discovered that we can't write text into a BCP that says "the
information about X is to be published as an ION" before IONs are
permanent. But perfection seems to escape us every time....)

             Harald

---

From: Russ Housley <[email-masked]>
Date: Thu, 17 Jan 2008 17:37:05 -0500

Harald:

This is my reservation as well.  The ION process has not been as 
light-weight as I would like.  Frankly, it is easier to generate an 
IESG Statement than an ION.

Russ

---

From: Jari Arkko <[email-masked]>
Date: Fri, 18 Jan 2008 16:03:29 +0200

> Several IONs have been produced, but I don't see people referring to them.
> never seen any reference to these ION documents.

Some IONs have been mentioned a few times. See these search results, for
instance.

http://www.google.com/custom?hl=en&client=google-coop-np&cof=AH%3Aleft%3BS%3Ahttp%3A%2F%2Fwww.ietf.org%2F%3BCX%3AIETF%2520%2526%2520IRTF%2520Mailing%2520List%2520Search%3BL%3Ahttp%3A%2F%2Fietf.org%2Fimages%2Fietflogo2f.gif%3BLH%3A100%3BLP%3A1%3BGFNT%3A%23666666%3BDIV%3A%23cccccc%3B&adkw=AELymgVmPhm6xOxqVYYkLfBhjlELCLKCNQ0MPgwdQ0YYMMlbPd1rUYSeqxsu4ZwC8EzV_JAjgaE_RNl1WM42lnF9xaa_CbZjt_ghkmydtVLy5Mxr_9Vrdq19SPdf3Gl5Pe3QiF1xGEsu&q=ion-ad-sponsoring&btnG=Search&cx=006728497408158459967%3Aybxjdw-bjjw

I have also given the AD sponsoring ION link to a fair number of people
in the context of them thinking about submitting some documents to the
IESG from outside WGs. And I would hope the Discuss criteria ION gets used.

I.e., not much use/discussion but some. Personally, I think we should
keep the concept.

Jari

---

From: <[email-masked]>
Date: Mon, 21 Jan 2008 14:24:34 +0200

While there are a couple of IONs whose content I find valuable (such
as ad-sponsoring and discuss-criteria), IMHO the same information
could be placed in "ordinary" web pages without losing much -- and
perhaps gaining something in the process.

Currently, we have similar information scattered over random web pages
on ietf.org, random pages in IESG wiki, and the IONs (with different
procedures and tools for updating them). My "reading between the lines" 
interpretation of RFC 4693 Section 5 is that perhaps creating IONs was 
considered easier than e.g. fixing the procedures and tools for 
maintaining ordinary ietf.org web pages. (This may well have been 
correct, BTW -- but perhaps the secretariat transition will bring
some new efforts to update www.ietf.org as well?)

But looking forward, and considering the question "what should be done
about IONs", the answer is less clear. If IONs encourage people to
clearly document things that are useful to others, then they have some
value there. Maybe - and this is just an unsupported hypothesis -
folks at IETF are more comfortable (or efficient, or motivated) with
writing things that are called "documents" rather than "web pages"
(even when there's no difference in actual content). And moving the
same information to "ordinary" web pages would probably mean creating
some sort of structure (e.g. header for distinguishing draft and
approved 
versions with some kind of standard header) and processes (for e.g.
approval).

However, how to organize web pages is a topic where I think
micromanagement (from e.g. me) would not be very productive. If 
useful information gets communicated in effective fashion, I'm OK 
with letting the IESG to choose the tools they use for maintaining 
things on the web, and don't really mind whether they get called 
"IONs", "wikis", or just "web pages".

Best regards,
Pasi

> -----Original Message-----
> From: ext The IESG [mailto:[email-masked]] 
> Sent: 16 January, 2008 21:41
> To: IETF Announcement list
> Cc: [email-masked]; [email-masked]
> Subject: Call for Comment: RFC 4693 experiment 
>

---

From: Stephane Bortzmeyer <[email-masked]>
Date: Mon, 21 Jan 2008 14:08:26 +0100

On Mon, Jan 21, 2008 at 02:24:34PM +0200,
 [email-masked] <[email-masked]> wrote 
 a message of 66 lines which said:

> My "reading between the lines" interpretation of RFC 4693 Section 5
> is that perhaps creating IONs was considered easier than e.g. fixing
> the procedures and tools for maintaining ordinary ietf.org web
> pages.

That's not my reading at all. This section explains clearly the
problem with Web pages:

      Web pages, which can be changed without notice, provide very
      little ability to track changes, and have no formal standing --
      confusion is often seen about who has the right to update them,
      what the process for updating them is, and so on.  It is hard when
      looking at a Web page to see whether this is a current procedure,
      a procedure introduced and abandoned, or a draft of a future
      procedure. 
...
   o  Unlike Web pages, there is an explicit mechanism for finding "all
      current versions", and a mechanism for tracking the history of a
      document.

---

From: <[email-masked]>
Date: Mon, 21 Jan 2008 15:21:13 +0200

Stephane Bortzmeyer wrote:
> > My "reading between the lines" interpretation of RFC 4693 
> > Section 5 is that perhaps creating IONs was considered easier 
> > than e.g. fixing the procedures and tools for maintaining 
> > ordinary ietf.org web pages.
> 
>       what the process for updating them is, and so on.  It 
>       is hard when looking at a Web page to see whether this is a 
>       current procedure, a procedure introduced and abandoned, or 
>       a draft of a future procedure. 
> ...
>    o  Unlike Web pages, there is an explicit mechanism for 
>       finding "all current versions", and a mechanism for 
>       tracking the history of a document.

Many web page management systems (such as wiki engines) 
have reasonably good mechanisms for tracking the history of 
web pages.  And similar processes for updating them (and "status 
line" at the beginning of page) could be applied for any pages, 
so this does not really explain why they had to be kept separate 
(and called differently) from "ordinary" web pages.

(I've heard rumors that at the time when RFC 4693 was written,
updating www.ietf.org web pages meant emailing your text to the
secretariat staff, who then edited the actual pages more or
less manually. This kind of system would easily explain why 
www.ietf.org is a mess... and IONs would certainly be an
improvement over that.)

Best regards,
Pasi

---

From: John Leslie <[email-masked]>
Date: Mon, 21 Jan 2008 09:04:24 -0500

I get the feeling that most critics of IONs are missing the point:
that IONs are intended to be a bit more lightweight than RFCs -- but
not a lot -- and easier to index.

> perhaps gaining something in the process.

   Indeed, the same information could -- and probably should -- be
placed on ordinary web pages, in a somewhat simplified form, referring
to the appropriate ION as the reference source. And those web pages
should be _really_easy_ to update if anything within them proves to be
confusing to the actual readers. But the ION update process should be
reserved for cases where the substance is misleading.

   We _really_don't_ want the IESG to be forced to review all changes
to web pages.

> ... My "reading between the lines" interpretation of RFC 4693 Section
> 5 is that perhaps creating IONs was considered easier than...

   I see no need to read between the lines. RFC 4693 set out principles
for an appropriate process for maintaining notes on operational
procedures.

> value there.

   I agree.

> ... moving the same information to "ordinary" web pages would
> probably mean creating some sort of structure...

   This is the path we should avoid. Web page maintenance stalls _very_
easily when there are too many folks worrying over the interpretation
of every word -- in different browsers, no less!

> "IONs", "wikis", or just "web pages".

   Sounds like we agree a lot more than we disagree...

--
John Leslie <[email-masked]>

---

From: "Tom.Petch" <[email-masked]>
Date: Tue, 22 Jan 2008 10:18:12 +0100

Inline
Tom Petch

----- Original Message -----
From: <[email-masked]>
To: <[email-masked]>
Cc: <[email-masked]>
Sent: Monday, January 21, 2008 1:24 PM
Subject: RE: Call for Comment: RFC 4693 experiment

Currently, we have similar information scattered over random web pages
on ietf.org, random pages in IESG wiki, and the IONs (with different
procedures and tools for updating them).

<tp>

I agree that the information is scattered and as such is a barrier to people
joining in and contributing.

I see a parallel with 'Finding Information' where what struck me most was the
diversity of response, how many different avenues may or may not bring an answer
to the question (and I saw no mention there of the Tao).

I think this scatter - grown like Topsy I would call it - is a significant
impediment to getting people involved with the IETF.  So keep it simple, use the
RFC process(es) and the web site (in serious need of redesign), and scrap IONs

Tom Petch

My "reading between the lines"

Best regards,
Pasi

---

From: Cullen Jennings <[email-masked]>
Date: Tue, 29 Jan 2008 13:35:58 -0800

I'd like to comment as an individual on one part of our process for  
doing IONs.

The process for publishing them has many bottlenecks and delays and we  
need a better way of doing it. If we decide to continue with IONs, I  
will provide detailed comments on issues with how we are doing them.  
Overall I think we would need tools so that an ION author can put a  
new version, reviewers could easily see the diffs from the previous  
version, and when the document is approved by the approving body, it  
gets posted and does not require manual editing of the document after  
it was approved.

---

From: Brian E Carpenter <[email-masked]>
Date: Wed, 30 Jan 2008 11:45:43 +1300

On 2008-01-30 10:35, Cullen Jennings wrote:
> Overall I think we would need tools so that an ION author can put a new
> version, reviewers could easily see the diffs from the previous version,
> and when the document is approved by the approving body, it gets posted
> and does not require manual editing of the document after it was approved.

I couldn't agree more (having worked with Cullen and others to
set up the current string and sealing wax we use for IONs).
So perhaps people should focus on whether the class of documents
available at http://www.ietf.org/IESG/content/ions.html
is useful, not on the mechanics of writing and posting them.

    Brian

---

From: John Leslie <[email-masked]>
Date: Wed, 30 Jan 2008 11:44:57 -0500

Brian E Carpenter <[email-masked]> wrote:
>> The process for publishing them has many bottlenecks and delays...
> 
> I couldn't agree more...
> perhaps people should focus on whether the class of documents

   I firmly believe these are useful, and that given more time we'll
fill in some of the gaps. (I most sincerely hope the IESG isn't even
considering discarding the IONs we already have.)

   I'd like to suggest that many of the RFC2026 diffs that Brian put
in his Internet Draft might be put in IONs, to the extent they merely
document current practice which already reflects IESG consensus.
(Running those through a WG process seems pointless...)