[Moderator Action] RE: Straw poll: what options did you review?

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Date: Wed, 7 Feb 2001 21:05:58 -0500 (EST)
From: "Larry Masinter" <LMM@acm.org>
To: "Geoffrey M. Clemm" <geoffrey.clemm@rational.com>,
        <ietf-dav-versioning@w3.org>
Message-ID: <NDBBKEBDLFENBJCGFOIJEEBAEGAA.LMM@acm.org>
Subject: RE: Straw poll: what options did you review?

The criteria for "Proposed Standard" in IETF is described in RFC 2026:

  A Proposed Standard specification is generally stable, has resolved
   known design choices, is believed to be well-understood, has received
   significant community review, and appears to enjoy enough community
   interest to be considered valuable.

I think "significant community review" means "a large number of working group
participants have reviewed the whole document". I think "well-understood"
means "most working group members could explain what it does" and
"enough community interest to be considered valuable" means "there
are lots of people who plan to implement this".

I think it's a fairly creative interpretation to translate "significant
community review" into "at least two people have read each section",
and not really consistant with my experience of how the IETF works.

If you split the document into "core" and "non-core", it's pretty clear
that the "core" document has been more widely reviewed than "non-core";
it might be able to make progress as a Proposed Standard because it's
aimed at a narrower community.

I'll also point out that it seems that progress through area directors,
IESG review and the RFC editor seem to be proportional to the square
of the length of the document rather than linear; shorter documents
get on the queue more quickly because (just as seems to have happened
with working group participants) reviewers have to find a block of time
where they can sit down and review the whole thing.

Chunking improves throughput. Use it.

Larry
-- 
http://larry.masinter.net

Received on Wednesday, 7 February 2001 22:18:37 UTC