Subject: [Tools-discuss] Re: I-D woes [Re: advice on role of a WG Chair]

From: Jari Arkko <[email-masked]>
Date: Fri, 30 Jun 2006 07:44:55 +0300

Folks,

I feel your pain about the submission problems. The current situation
is indeed bad. I can not estimate how frequent the problem is, I think
we are still talking about isolated cases, but if you are hit with this
problem it typically happens at the worst time and can disrupt your
work.

Having said that, we do have real reasons why the boilerplate language
is there, and I do not see the requirement for it going away anytime soon.
We should not be sending drafts back for long lines etc, but I do think that
we need to check for the boilerplate. And there is no way we can do
that without tools. The problem is, the current tools are not all that
great, but as Henrik noted the secretariat is in the process of (a )moving
to a better tool and perhaps more importantly (b) implementing the
submission web tool, which makes it possible for the submitter to see
and correct the problems as he submits.

In addition to boilerplate issues, we also need to make sure that
the draft is suitable for the IETF's access tools to the drafts,
the tracker, etc. It sounds like John's filename capitalization problem
is related to that. Its likely that we need to check for a few other
things too, like length of file name, ability to find the author
contact information from the draft, etc. Again, the submission tool
should free you from late surprises in this regard.

Also, the secretariat has always been receptive to fixing these
problems even after the deadline. You should be able to resubmit
a fix.

Finally, there may also be other problems. James' problem sounds
like a re-run of the problem they had at netlmm had a few months ago.
At that time all we could determine was that the secretariat was not
receiving the e-mails from the submitters, but it was never
determined why this happened. I have now sent mail to the
secretariat and have gotten an automated response back, so I'm
hoping this case will be solved soon. In any case, I have started
my AD review on the document which was what you wanted to
happen anyway, so I hope we're not loosing too much time over
this.

In the meantime, its been my observation that if your draft is prepared
in XML, you use a recent version of XML2RFC, and you pass the idnits
web check, then you are far less likely to have problems than in other
cases.

If you encounter a problem that looks like a bug, complain to
[email-masked].

--Jari

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---

From: <[email-masked]>
Date: Fri, 30 Jun 2006 08:02:38 +0300

Jari,

I have no problem about checking for nits (as some of the 
nits do have significant impact upon those people reading the
drafts) & the boilerplate is there for good reason.

I think the biggest take-away from this thread is that there
have been changes to the submission procedure which have
been unannounced & undocumented (perhaps known only by the
Tools team, IESG & Secretariat).

We all deal with software, so we understand that there will
always be bugs, especially in the initial deployment of the
sw.  Updating production software around critical deadlines
is never a good idea - but I don't know if this is the case.

In the future, it might be useful for the Secretariat to
announce changes, with a note of how to follow-up if there
are any problems.  Something along the lines of:

 We have updated our automated draft submission mechanism,
 corresponding to "insert appropriate reference here".  This
 will help us process drafts more efficiently.  If you have
 any concerns or comments, contact us at [email-masked].

Or something like that.  

When working group members or draft authors come to working group
chairs and ask us why their drafts were bounced, where is the
stated policy about the cause of the bounce action - it isn't
a good situation if the chair can just shrug our shoulders and
mumble "dunno."

thanks,
John

>-----Original Message-----
>From: ext Jari Arkko [mailto:[email-masked]] 
>Sent: 30 June, 2006 07:45
>To: Loughney John (Nokia-NRC/Helsinki); 
>[email-masked]; James Kempf
>Cc: [email-masked]; IETF TOOLS discussion
>Subject: Re: I-D woes [Re: advice on role of a WG Chair]
>
>Folks,
>
>I feel your pain about the submission problems. The current 
>situation is indeed bad. I can not estimate how frequent the 
>problem is, I think we are still talking about isolated cases, 
>but if you are hit with this problem it typically happens at 
>the worst time and can disrupt your work.
>
>Having said that, we do have real reasons why the boilerplate 
>language is there, and I do not see the requirement for it 
>going away anytime soon.
>We should not be sending drafts back for long lines etc, but I 
>do think that we need to check for the boilerplate. And there 
>is no way we can do that without tools. The problem is, the 
>current tools are not all that great, but as Henrik noted the 
>secretariat is in the process of (a )moving to a better tool 
>and perhaps more importantly (b) implementing the submission 
>web tool, which makes it possible for the submitter to see and 
>correct the problems as he submits.
>
>In addition to boilerplate issues, we also need to make sure 
>that the draft is suitable for the IETF's access tools to the 
>drafts, the tracker, etc. It sounds like John's filename 
>capitalization problem is related to that. Its likely that we 
>need to check for a few other things too, like length of file 
>name, ability to find the author contact information from the 
>draft, etc. Again, the submission tool should free you from 
>late surprises in this regard.
>
>Also, the secretariat has always been receptive to fixing 
>these problems even after the deadline. You should be able to 
>resubmit a fix.
>
>Finally, there may also be other problems. James' problem 
>sounds like a re-run of the problem they had at netlmm had a 
>few months ago.
>At that time all we could determine was that the secretariat 
>was not receiving the e-mails from the submitters, but it was 
>never determined why this happened. I have now sent mail to 
>the secretariat and have gotten an automated response back, so 
>I'm hoping this case will be solved soon. In any case, I have 
>started my AD review on the document which was what you wanted 
>to happen anyway, so I hope we're not loosing too much time over this.
>
>In the meantime, its been my observation that if your draft is 
>prepared in XML, you use a recent version of XML2RFC, and you 
>pass the idnits web check, then you are far less likely to 
>have problems than in other cases.
>

---

From: Henrik Levkowetz <[email-masked]>
Date: Fri, 30 Jun 2006 08:42:15 +0200

Hi,

  I want to respond primarily to one point below:

> Tools team, IESG & Secretariat).

Exclude the Tools Team here - if we'd received an indication of
changed procedures, I would have updated idnits to warn about
them.

>  any concerns or comments, contact us at [email-masked].

I very much agree.

> a good situation if the chair can just shrug our shoulders and

Again, I agree.  And of course, you can imagine that a similar
situation has happened a few times when people contact me as idnits
maintainer and wonder why a draft that passes idnits gets rejected -
I can only say that if I'd known, I'd have tried to update idnits
accordingly...

Regards,

	Henrik

---

From: <[email-masked]>
Date: Fri, 30 Jun 2006 09:45:19 +0300

Hi Henrik,

>> I have no problem about checking for nits (as some of the nits do
have 
>> significant impact upon those people reading the
>> I think the biggest take-away from this thread is that there have
been 
>> changes to the submission procedure which have been unannounced & 
>> undocumented (perhaps known only by the Tools team, IESG & 
>> Secretariat).
>
>Exclude the Tools Team here - if we'd received an indication 
>of changed procedures, I would have updated idnits to warn about them.

Just for the record, I'm not accusing anyone - hence the 'perhaps' in
my statement above.  I guess this just makes my point even stronger - 
when there are some changes to the submissions process, a small public 
note would be helpful.

thanks,
John

---

From: Jari Arkko <[email-masked]>
Date: Fri, 30 Jun 2006 09:47:04 +0300

>a good situation if the chair can just shrug our shoulders and
I can take it up with the secretariat to see if we actually could update
the I-D requirements to state what is really required today (like no
uppercase
in the filename). Beyond that, I think we should use our resources to go
to the new tool, rather than explaining what's wrong with the old one
or updating it...

--Jari

---

From: Henrik Levkowetz <[email-masked]>
Date: Fri, 30 Jun 2006 09:45:42 +0200

Hi John,

> when there are some changes to the submissions process, a small public 

Oh, no problem, I didn't take it as accusatory -- I just wanted to
let you know that we didn't know about this either.

And I continue agreeing on your point regarding the announcement of
changes to the submission process :-)

Regards,

	Henrik

---

From: Joe Touch <[email-masked]>
Date: Fri, 30 Jun 2006 09:45:19 -0700

> Tools team, IESG & Secretariat).

Amen. But you also forgot "unreviewed". They sometimes add required
elements without discussion too.

Joe

---

From: Jari Arkko <[email-masked]>
Date: Fri, 30 Jun 2006 20:05:33 +0300

FWIW, out the four reported problems, James' issue seems
like an e-mail problem (at someone's end) and John's filename
requirement is something that

    http://www.ietf.org/ietf/1id-guidelines.html

already talks about. The copyright template requirements
are also clear, and require the current year to be used.
These were announced here:

  http://www1.ietf.org/mail-archive/web/ietf-announce/current/msg01167.html

But I can't find the last page requirement
that Donald reported of from the guidelines.
Perhaps this is a bug.

Anyway, I do not believe we have a satisfactory solution
until there's real-time feedback that you can or can not
submit this draft because of <X>.

--Jari