Subject: Authors, Editors, Contributors, and WG drafts (was [Sipping] Ready for IESG review: draft-ietf-sipping-toip-05.txt - Indication of loss)

From: "Spencer Dawkins" <[email-masked]>
Date: Thu, 6 Jul 2006 09:56:05 -0500

(Please follow up to this posting privately, since it's falling off-topic 
for SIPPING)

For what it's worth, ftp://ftp.rfc-editor.org/in-notes/rfc2418.txt does 
describe the role of a WG draft editor as

6.3. Document Editor

   Most IETF working groups focus their efforts on a document, or set of
   documents, that capture the results of the group's work.  A working
   group generally designates a person or persons to serve as the Editor
   for a particular document.  The Document Editor is responsible for
   ensuring that the contents of the document accurately reflect the
   decisions that have been made by the working group.

So after a document is adopted as a working group draft, the "authors" are 
SUPPOSED to work out their technial differences on the mailing list, and not 
in private. This is one of the things that change when a document is adopted 
by the working group.

However, many of the process questions Radhika has asked on in this (and 
related) threads are important, and not limited to this draft, to SIPPING, 
or even to RAI.

The discussion about who is/is not an author, an editor, a contributor, or a 
whatever in this thread is not unusual in today's IETF, and is often 
contentious. I have just finished WGLC for a working group in a different 
area with a draft in another area which also did the "oops, we have seven 
authors" compression, and I believe it's accurate to say that I got more 
e-mail on this topic than on all technical points combined. I used to think 
that being dropped off the front page/upper right hand corner was 
particularly serious for academics and consultants, but am seeing this 
concern raised by many participants, and it's serious enough that some 
people can get funding to attend face-to-face meetings if they are authors, 
but not if they are listed as contributors.

The current Working Group Leadership training talks about "who controls the 
text" a lot (see http://edu.ietf.org/download/56/WGLeadership-IETF-65.pdf, 
starting about slide 12). In particular, slide 16 lists a number of reasons 
why a working group may select an editor who has not been an author on the 
draft. If the community doesn't agree, we should talk (just not on the 
SIPPING mailing list).

It may be worth updating RFC 2418 (which hasn't been updated in these 
sections since the late 1990s, so doesn't talk about five-author "guidance" 
etc.) to reflect current practice.

Perhaps this is something that could be mentioned in Montreal, either in the 
IESG plenary or in the General Area meeting on Friday morning.

Thanks,

Spencer

----- Original Message ----- 
From: "Roy, Radhika R." <[email-masked]>
To: "Gunnar Hellström" <[email-masked]>
Cc: "Sipping@Ietf. Org" <[email-masked]>
Sent: Thursday, July 06, 2006 9:03 AM
Subject: RE: [Sipping] Ready for IESG review: 
draft-ietf-sipping-toip-05.txt - Indication of loss

Gunnar:

OK, agreed. We are done. I appreciate your time and effort.

Best regards,
Radhika

BTW: It is unfortunate for us that we, being authors, have to resolve our
technical differences in the WG mailing list. Let us do a soul search as we
do the similar thing next time around. 

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