Subject: Internet Draft Submission cutoff dates

From: John C Klensin <[email-masked]>
Date: Fri, 18 Jan 2008 14:06:19 -0500

Hi.

The current cutoff schedule for Internet Drafts dates from my
time on the IESG (i.e., is ancient history).  It was conditioned
on the pre-IETF rush and the observation that the Secretariat,
at the time, required a sufficiently long time to get drafts
posted in the pre-meeting rush that, unless there was a two-week
cutoff, we couldn't reliably have all expected documents in hand
prior to the start of the meetings.

Splitting the "new" and "revised" drafts was a further attempt
to compensate when the load built up enough that the choices
were between such a split and moving the submission deadline for
_all_ I-Ds back even further.  The conclusion was that a split
was desirable because a three-week cutoff for revisions would
seriously interfere with WGs getting work done in the run-up to
IETF meetings.

With the automated posting tools typically getting I-Ds posted
in well under an hour and a tiny fraction of the documents being
handled manually, the original reasons for the submission
cutoffs no longer apply.  It is still reasonable, IMO, to have a
cutoff early enough to permit people to receive and read
documents before departing for the meetings, but it seems to me
that criterion would require a cutoff a week (or even less)
prior to the meeting, not two or three weeks.  Other models
about giving people time to read might suggest leaving the "new
document" cutoff at three weeks before the meeting, but seeing
if we could move the "revision" cutoff considerably closer to
the meetings.

I don't necessarily object to retaining the current two and
three week posting deadlines, but I'd like to know that the IESG
has done a careful review of those deadlines and their
applicability to the current environment and concluded that they
are still appropriate, rather than having the secretariat retain
them simply on tradition and autopilot.

thanks,
   john

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

---

From: "Eric Gray" <[email-masked]>
Date: Fri, 18 Jan 2008 13:18:33 -0600

John,

	Your description of the reasons for having the draft sub-
mission dead-lines may agree with original thinking that went 
into setting them, initially.  However, there were collateral 
benefits that the new automated submission process helps to 
improve - but does not eliminate.

	For the people who participate in a fair number of working
groups in the IETF, requiring early posting allows for a greater
likelihood that they will be able to at least skim each new draft
sometime before setting up their laptop at the beginning of each
meeting in which that draft will be discussed.

	Moreover, having a week longer grace period for subsequent
submissions also makes sense from this same perspective - because
it is usually the case that there is less new material to absorb
in a -01 or subsequent version than there was in a -00 version.
Not always, but usually.  One exception is when a draft becomes
a working group draft - which means it becomes a -00 version with
virtually no change from a previous (often a -03 or -04) version.

--
Eric Gray
Principal Engineer
Ericsson  

> -----Original Message-----
> From: John C Klensin [mailto:[email-masked]] 
> Sent: Friday, January 18, 2008 2:06 PM
> Cc: [email-masked]
> Subject: Internet Draft Submission cutoff dates
> 
> Hi.
>

---

From: Fred Baker <[email-masked]>
Date: Fri, 18 Jan 2008 12:04:39 -0800

On Jan 18, 2008, at 11:18 AM, Eric Gray wrote:

> For the people who participate in a fair number of working groups  
> in the IETF, requiring early posting allows for a greater  

Yes, and dating from my time in office, that was also a consideration.

---

From: John C Klensin <[email-masked]>
Date: Fri, 18 Jan 2008 16:47:15 -0500

--On Friday, 18 January, 2008 13:18 -0600 Eric Gray
<[email-masked]> wrote:

> groups in the IETF, requiring early posting allows for a
> greater likelihood that they will be able to at least skim
> each new draft sometime before setting up their laptop at the
> beginning of each meeting in which that draft will be
> discussed.

Eric,

To be clear, I was not advocating doing away with the cutoff.  I
think cutoffs are a good idea, for exactly the reasons you
suggest and because they avoid any necessity for per-WG rules
about deadlines to prevent a particularly nasty way of gaming
the system.  I just want to be sure that the intervals we have
been using are still appropriate.

> submissions also makes sense from this same perspective -
> because it is usually the case that there is less new material
> to absorb in a -01 or subsequent version than there was in a
> -00 version. Not always, but usually.  One exception is when a
> draft becomes a working group draft - which means it becomes a
> -00 version with virtually no change from a previous (often a
> -03 or -04) version.

Just for purposes of discussion (I do not have any strong
positions on this other than a desire to have it reviewed), I
think it makes a lot of sense to require a long lead time on new
drafts in order that people have a way to consider new concepts,
whether they want to attend particular WGs, etc.  Three weeks
does not strike me as unreasonable for that purpose.   And the
draft-transition exception you mention is already part of the
rules.

However, in many WGs, we see a lot of work done in the weeks
before an IETF meeting, both before and after the current
posting deadline.  I think it is in our interest to have WGs
looking at drafts that are as up-to-date as possible, consistent
with everyone in the WG having a reasonable opportunity to read
them before the actual meeting.  So I'm not sure that two weeks
is optimal for revision drafts.  Perhaps the tradeoffs would
work better at a week before, or perhaps at some other interval.
I suspect that setting the revised draft cutoff much shorter
than a week before the meeting would mean that some people would
not be able to review them before beginning to travel to the
meetings and that the Secretariat might not have time to
manually process whatever needed to be manually processed, but I
don't know.

I do not think it is either wise or useful to try to design the
details of this on the IETF list (nor do I think you were
suggesting that either) and hope my note does not set off a long
thread.   I believe it is reasonable for us to ask the IESG to
think about the issue, make a decision and tell us.   I'd prefer
to hear about their reasoning, but I can live without even that.
I just don't think it is reasonable to continue automatically
with the current cutoffs when the reason for setting those
particular cutoff values has largely disappeared.

And I wanted to mention the question on the IETF list precisely
because I hope that this is not an appropriate subject for an
RFC3933 experiment.
 
   john

---

From: "Eric Gray" <[email-masked]>
Date: Fri, 18 Jan 2008 16:17:28 -0600

DÁccord.

--
Eric Gray
Principal Engineer
Ericsson  

> Sent: Friday, January 18, 2008 4:47 PM
> To: Eric Gray
> Cc: [email-masked]
> Subject: RE: Internet Draft Submission cutoff dates
> Importance: High
> 
> 
>

---

From: Brian E Carpenter <[email-masked]>
Date: Sat, 19 Jan 2008 14:17:03 +1300

On 2008-01-19 09:04, Fred Baker wrote:
>> For the people who participate in a fair number of working groups in
>> the IETF, requiring early posting allows for a greater likelihood that
>> they will be able to at least skim each new draft sometime before
>> setting up their laptop at the beginning of each meeting in which that
>> draft will be discussed.
> 

A possible approach would be to use the cutoff dates as deadlines
for drafts to be placed on the WG agenda - i.e. allow automated
posting to continue unabated, but only allow "late" drafts to be
discussed in the meeting if so agreed during agenda-bashing.

I certainly think that having a couple of weeks to read drafts
is desirable. One week including intercontinental travel is
very short.

    Brian

---

From: Fred Baker <[email-masked]>
Date: Fri, 18 Jan 2008 17:29:30 -0800

> discussed in the meeting if so agreed during agenda-bashing.

Some of us do that anyway :-)