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Re: [Fwd: WG Action: Application Exchange WG (apex) to conclude]

On Friday, April 25, 2003, at 04:34 AM, Thomas Narten wrote:
If we can change this policy, I think we should. Ned and I were
talking today about this, and he's convinced me that it contributes
to a sense that the IESG takes too long to do anything. Having a
doc in REF hold keeps the WG on the books and can make it look like even
reasonably fast-paced work was slow.
Note. It seems that RFC editor delays have been slowly going up over
the years, so now it does frequently take 3 months for an RFC to pop
out. This doesn't make it seem awfully long sometimes, especially for
WGs we desperately want to close.

But documents in a REF state are different. Personally, I'm not even a
fan of approving them. By definition, a normative reference means the
other doc is critical. But how can we approve the first document
without being sure that the part being referenced is stable and
consistent with the wording that is in the first document? While a few
weeks may be OK, a year is certainly not. We don't always worry about
this. I think there are advantages sometimes to letting a document sit
in the WG until the normative references are done, rather than turning
those delays into the generic "IESG delays" (as these things tend to
be perceived).
I think this highlights the mesh of dependencies that get created
as we create standards, but I suspect that not moving documents
into "done" states while we wait on references isn't a practical solution.
There is a certain amount of tweaking that is *always* possible
on a document, and gettting to a point where we say that a
doc shouldn't be tweaked any more for this level of standardization is a
useful milestone. We could, of course, create a "done" state within
the working group, which might have much the same effect, but
I suspect that actually handing it over to the IESG/RFC editor
is actually helpful here.


I also think that at times keeping one around through this creates
an attractive nuisance for folks who want to revisit issues the
working group has passed or which are not in the group's charter.  A
good chair can squelch that, but why waste a good chair's time on
it?

How does this apply for documents that the IESG has already approved?

It's not so much the documents that got out, but the decisions
_not_ to tackle a problem that get challenged here.  It's easy
for someone to say "well, we have time now, let's go back and
tackle $TAR_BABY".
I agree that the mailing list should stay open for questions and further
discussion in most cases, but the content of the output of the working
group should be a done deal when it goes to the RFC Editor. When
it has no more content to output to the RFC Editor thus seems like
a fine time to me to shake their hands, pat them on the back, and
close down the group.
I'd support closing WGs down early, at least for those where the AD
wants it done this way. But in many cases, their isn't that much
urgency either.

Agreed.


Thomas