Re: Request For MIB Review (WAS: Design pattern)

["C. M. Heard" <heard@pobox.com>]

On Thu, 12 Jun 2003, Wijnen, Bert (Bert) wrote:
> Pretty weird is it not.
> Are you volunteering to review their document?
> I believe Dan Romascanu also volunteered, but he will only
> be able to start 2nd half [of] June.

Whoever does volunteer to review the Megaco MIB document
might want to look at this message:

http://ops.ietf.org/lists/mreview/mreview.2003/msg00423.html

Basically they are asking for a review of a MIB module without
first having checked ID-Nits or "Guidelines for MIB Authors and
Reviewers."  When I forwarded that message to the Megaco WG
mailing list the chair admitted that he had not read the
document before asking for a MIB doctor review.

I don't know about the rest of you, but I HATE to waste my time
picking all kinds of nits that the authors could have taken care of
if only they had taken the time to read (and follow) the guidelines
that have been so laboriously written down.  The WG chairs have been
told told ... and they should be telling their document editors and
authors before the documents get to us.

We might want to consider taking a fairly hard-line policy and
insist that authors/editors do their homework first before asking a
reviewer to spend his or her time.  Speaking for myself, reviews
tend to take a lot less time and be a lot more rewarding (both for
me and for the WG and document authors) if I can concentrate on the
technical content rather than mechanical stuff and nits.  I agree
that we do have to check for the nits, but maybe the right thing to
do is to immediately remand a document to the authors for correction
if we find lots of compile errors and/or ignored ID-Nits stuff.

Mike