Subject: RE: XML2RFC submission (was Re: ASCII art)

From: "Wijnen, Bert (Bert)" <[email-masked]>
Date: Thu, 24 Nov 2005 15:49:22 +0100

Dave Crocker wrote:
> This looks like quite a good list.  The only thing I would add is an 
> interactive submission tool that validates the xml2rfc document being 
> submitted.
> 
> Rather than explicitly penalize the text submitters with an earlier date, 
> I'd suggest providing a bonus extension deadline for those submitting via 
> this interactive path, since it would require NO human intervention on the 
> I-D publishing side... after the tool gets built.
> 

I don't want to end up in long discussions on IETF list.

But one of the reasons for EARLY submission deadline is to ensure that
the IETF participants actually get some time to READ/STUDY the documents
that need f2f time in IETF WG meetings!

Bert

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From: Henning Schulzrinne <[email-masked]>
Date: Thu, 24 Nov 2005 10:03:34 -0500

> that need f2f time in IETF WG meetings!

Indeed. The idea is that since XML-RFC-formatted drafts can be vetted 
automatically, we can cut down on the interval between the I-D deadline 
and when the draft is actually announced and available. This time 
interval seems to be as large as three or four days, given the hundreds 
of last-minute submissions received by the secretariat. Thus, if we were 
to give XML-RFC formatted drafts one additional day, they'd still appear 
several days earlier than drafts do today. This obviously presumes the 
existence of the automated I-D submission tool that is being discussed.

---

From: Dave Crocker <[email-masked]>
Date: Thu, 24 Nov 2005 08:10:52 -0800

> that need f2f time in IETF WG meetings!

When TCP was improved enough so that it could saturate a ethernet (jumping 
from a max of 2Mbps to more than 9) there were serious proposals not to 
implement the improvements, the improvements would permit unfair use of the LAN.

It is pretty much never a good idea to have the mechanics of a process 
contain artificial constraints, as a means of implementing higher-level 
policies.

If a working group is worried about documents getting read, they will impose 
their own deadlines or they will constrain their agenda.  Having the 
Secretariat use an IETF-wide deadline for this purpose is Procrustean, to 
say the least.

d/

-- 

Dave Crocker
Brandenburg InternetWorking
<http://bbiw.net>

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From: Eliot Lear <[email-masked]>
Date: Fri, 25 Nov 2005 10:10:52 +0100

Dave,

> If a working group is worried about documents getting read, they will
> impose their own deadlines or they will constrain their agenda.  Having
> the Secretariat use an IETF-wide deadline for this purpose is
> Procrustean, to say the least.

This sort of constraint is a safe guard against run away working group
chairs attempting to ram through changes by silencing people who have
not read the latest draft that came out while people were traveling to
the event.

Eliot

---

From: Dave Crocker <[email-masked]>
Date: Fri, 25 Nov 2005 07:41:55 -0800

Eliot,

> not read the latest draft that came out while people were traveling to

The issue is not the reasonableness of the reason for wanting to do it, but 
rather the unreasonableness of imposing it on all working groups.

Fear that some groups might stray is not a good reason for treating all 
groups with that fear.

The IETF used to be quite flexible, permitting many styles of legitimate 
working group operation.  Instead we have let fear of runaway working groups 
  justify more and more burdens.  So rather than being a venue that can 
permit  minimal overhead -- where legitimate -- we have become a venue with 
high overhead for all efforts.

d/

-- 

Dave Crocker

---

From: Eliot Lear <[email-masked]>
Date: Fri, 25 Nov 2005 17:32:48 +0100

But the problem, Dave, is that everyone already churns their drafts
right before the deadline.  It's not like SOME groups would go till the
last possible minute- nearly everybody would, and the plane ride's not
THAT long... ;-)

---

From: Ned Freed <[email-masked]>
Date: Fri, 25 Nov 2005 16:50:58 -0800 (PST)

> not read the latest draft that came out while people were traveling to

In practive all this does is force groups to distribute drafts via other means.
I've seen plenty of cases where the version of a draft discussed at a meeting
isn't available as an I-D yet.

In other words, the constraint doesn't appear to be an effective safeguard
in practice. Dave has it right: This is simply a Procrustian annoyance.

				Ned

---

From: Dave Crocker <[email-masked]>
Date: Sat, 26 Nov 2005 11:39:22 -0800

Folks,

In spite of Bert's desire to avoid a lengthy thread, I believe this issue
needs serious discussion because it so thoroughly exemplifies the approach
the IETF has been taking in the creation of its rules:

>> chairs 

To begin:

1. A problem working group is not fixed by imposing arbitrary rules and
deadlines on it.

2. Arbitrary rules and deadlines are indiscriminate.  They penalize good
workers as well as bad.

3. Rules and deadlines that attack symptoms rather than core requirements
create an arcane and arbitrary bureaucracy that serves more as a barrier to
getting work done that a facilitator.

To elaborate:

Is is ever valid for a working group to want to post a new draft late in the
game, very near -- or even during -- and IETF meeting?  The answer is
clearly yes, which is why working groups route around the IETF's arbitrary
deadline in the manner that Ned cites.

So the early deadline rule does not even fix the problem it supposedly attacks.

Working group rough consensus is supposed to determine decisions within a 
working group.  If the chairs can 'ram through changes by silencing people" 
then there is a much, much deeper problem with the working group that merely 
having late drafts getting submitted.

d/

-- 

Dave Crocker

---

From: Doug Royer <[email-masked]>
Date: Sat, 26 Nov 2005 14:12:08 -0700

Dave Crocker wrote:
> ...

Yes.

Often people do not read the drafts until right before an IETF
meeting. Most issues are raised right before an IETF meeting. I think it
would be great to be able to submit fixes that will make the meeting
more productive. It does no good to discuss text that almost everyone
already knows has problems.

-- 

Doug Royer                     | http://INET-Consulting.com
-------------------------------|-----------------------------

               We Do Standards - You Need Standards

---

From: Eliot Lear <[email-masked]>
Date: Sat, 26 Nov 2005 23:05:34 +0100

Dave,

> Working group rough consensus is supposed to determine decisions within
> a working group.  If the chairs can 'ram through changes by silencing
> people" then there is a much, much deeper problem with the working group
> that merely having late drafts getting submitted.

I find that rough consensus BARELY works (if it can be said to work at
all) for technical matters.  I've watched working group chairs abuse
their ability to declare rough consensus.  The result has been many a
camel.  Maybe this does indeed point to a deeper problem (who needs so
many camels? ;-), but working group chairs should NOT make it up as they
go along.  They have enough to do.  So you need some general rules of
behavior, and this falls under that category.  It's a bit of a social
contract where we say "it is reasonable for people to have their drafts
in a certain point in advance, and therefore it is reasonable for people
who participate in the meetings to have read them."  Nothing arbitrary
about that.

In order to relax the rule, the guy who shows up in the working group
who has questions because he has NOT read the draft would have to be
accommodated at the expense of the time of everyone else.  I think the
change would be a bad trade off.

Also, having worked with standards bodies who DO NOT have this rule, I
can tell you that it's quite frustrating to get into an argument with
someone only to discover that each is working off a different version of
a draft.  It also makes diffs harder when someone actually sends text.

Eliot

---

From: Brian E Carpenter <[email-masked]>
Date: Sun, 27 Nov 2005 09:36:22 +0100

> already knows has problems.

As Eliot pointed out, discussing text that has changed since half the
people in the room read it doesn't work either. I really don't believe
that the submission deadline was created in order to prevent abuse
of process - it was created to ensure that everyone in the room is
actually discussing the same thing. Our meetings (unlike those of some
standards groups) aren't drafting sessions - the idea is to clarify
substantive issues, but wordsmithing and actual consensus happens on
the list in our process.

A good time to discuss this issue will be when we have an automatic
I-D submission tool according to draft-ietf-tools-draft-submission.
Until then, we need the deadline in any case, to release staff resources
to prepare for the meeting.

    Brian

---

From: Harald Tveit Alvestrand <[email-masked]>
Date: Sun, 27 Nov 2005 12:54:03 +0100

Speaking not so much to the deadline in particular, but to the concept of 
"rules versus judgments"....

> getting work done that a facilitator.

<irony> How nice to know that you think so, Dave.... does that mean that we 
will have no more suggestions for arbitrarily chopping off working groups 
that don't meet certain deadlines for delivering useful output?
</irony>

unfortunately also:

1. A problem working group always resists getting its issues fixed.

2. A problem working group's first line of defense is "we don't have a 
problem".

3. A problem working group's second line of defense is "what rules did we 
violate".

4. A problem working group's last ditch line of defense is to make the job 
of fixing its problems so unpleasant for the person who tries to help fix 
it that that person either burns out or chooses to work on some more 
rewarding task.

(this does not apply only to working groups....)

In most cases, rules are, in addition to giving guidance, a tool for 
getting to defense line #4 quickly..... viz:

- a WG that has problems getting drafts in on time MAY have someone who 
tries to ramrod things through - OR it may have genuine last-minute changes.

- an author who's submitting drafts with improper boilerplate MAY be sloppy 
and/or unable to get the CLRs right - OR he may be trying to slip something 
into the IETF system that gives his company leverage later

- a WG that consistently misses deadlines and has deadlines 1 year out of 
date (I chair one of those :-() MAY have a problem with the WG chair's 
attention bandwidth, the participation, or the style of debate - OR it may 
be so close to finishing that it's decided it's more important to finish 
the last set of documents than to update its charter

In all cases, I think there's no substitute for really looking at the 
specifics of the situation and trying to figure out what's going on - and 
the most important resource we have there is the bandwidth of good people 
who are willing and able to do the work.

Rules are tools. But occasionally we need all the tools we can use.

---

From: Dave Crocker <[email-masked]>
Date: Mon, 28 Nov 2005 09:03:35 -0800

...
 >
 > <irony> How nice to know that you think so, Dave.... does that mean that
 > we will have no more suggestions for arbitrarily chopping off working
 > groups that don't meet certain deadlines for delivering useful output?
 > </irony>

Harald,

You think that dealing with the current issue implies some sort of lock-step 
relationship that determines the correct answer for the earlier topic of 
working group productivity time-limits?

Please consider reading "Crimes Against Logic" as a remedial effort.  It 
does quite a good job of clarifying the errors in such misguided responses.

At the least, please read my comments (and Ned's) more carefully.  I said 
"arbitrary". Lest that seem too broad and vague, I'll instead simply use 
"misguided".

The earlier discussion was about a problem that has massive effect on the 
consumption of IETF resources and also seems to correlate with the 
likelihood of IETF work being successful.  In that case, the basis for a 
working group productivity time-limit rule is tied quite carefully to a real 
and basic problem and it attacks it directly.

By contrast, the arguments in favor of having a posting deadline, as a means 
of enforcing some working group process requirements, has been demonstrated 
a) not to work, and b) to hurt efforts with legitimate reasons for issuing 
drafts "late".

So, Harald, rather than straining to dismiss the current issue by claiming 
that there is irony here, please consider responding to the actual points 
being made.

In particular, the line of analysis that seems to dominate the current rule, 
and the defense of it, is to focus only on a particular fear and a 
particular symptom, and not on whether the rule is effective and not on 
whether it has damaging side-effects.

d/
-- 

Dave Crocker

---

From: Harald Tveit Alvestrand <[email-masked]>
Date: Mon, 28 Nov 2005 21:12:45 +0100

> "arbitrary". Lest that seem too broad and vague, I'll instead simply use

I don't think this discussion is terribly productive, so I'll shut up after 
this....

my point, as far as I had one, was that you were making a general statement 
about arbitrary rules, without reference to any particular set of them.

You have claimed that the I-D submission deadline is arbitrary, despite the 
fact that people have advanced two separate reasons for them (reduced load 
on staff just before the meetings and giving people time to read).

I have claimed that I think your ideas for chopping off working groups that 
fail to meet fairly rigid deadlines are not useful (because they will be 
seen as arbiatrary), despite the fact that you think differently.

I think we agree that arbitrary rules are not useful.
But we have failed to find common ground on which rules fit that 
characterization.

I suggest that we retire accusations of "arbitrariness" from the 
discussion, and rather try to discuss real and perceived effects of the 
rules.

                         Harald

---

From: Dave Crocker <[email-masked]>
Date: Tue, 29 Nov 2005 08:49:56 -0800

Harald,

> I don't think this discussion is terribly productive, so I'll shut up 
> after this....

Indeed, it is difficult to have a productive discussion when postings fail 
to respond to the meat of a proposal with which they disagree, preferring 
instead to focus on generalities and wordsmithing.

It should not be surprising how consistently discussions like these are 
derailed in this manner, but for some reason, it still is.

> my point, as far as I had one, was that you were making a general 
> statement about arbitrary rules, without reference to any particular set 
> of them.

First your focus, here, on the word "arbitrary" has little or nothing to do 
with your previous posting.  Even if it did, it ignores the meat of the 
3-bullet list I gave, choosing to focus on a single vocabulary choice, in 
one of the bullets, that really is not essential to the points I was (and 
try to continue to) make.

My best guess is that your focus, here, is merely latching on to the line of 
distraction that was raised in the private note sent to the two of us.

> You have claimed that the I-D submission deadline is arbitrary, despite 
> the fact that people have advanced two separate reasons for them 
> (reduced load on staff just before the meetings and giving people time 
> to read).

Notice how nicely you are ignoring my suggestion of an alternate term: 
misguided?

Notice that paying attention to that alternate term makes your current focus 
quite meaningless.

It also might mean you would have to focus on the counter-arguments that 
have been raised, namely that the rule is not effective against 
inappropriate late postings and that it has a negative impact on legitimate 
late postings.

This seems to be the usual way that suggestions for change are met:  Focus 
on fears of abuse that a procedure ostensibly responds to, and ignore 
observations that they do not work and that they have undesireable negative 
impacts.

> I have claimed that I think your ideas for chopping off working groups 
> that fail to meet fairly rigid deadlines are not useful (because they 
> will be seen as arbiatrary), despite the fact that you think differently.

If you want to re-discuss the working group time limit proposal, please 
raise it on a separate thread, rather than making it another point of 
distraction in the current thread.

> discussion, and rather try to discuss real and perceived effects of the 

Already done, as you know.

You seem to be the only one continuing to use the word.

d/
-- 

Dave Crocker