PROTO Team H. Levkowetz
Internet-Draft Ericsson
Intended status: Informational D. Meyer
Expires: April 25, 2007 Cisco/University of Oregon
L. Eggert
NEC
A. Mankin
October 22, 2006
Document Shepherding from Working Group Last Call to Publication
draft-ietf-proto-wgchair-doc-shepherding-08
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Copyright Notice
Copyright (C) The Internet Society (2006).
Abstract
This document describes methodologies that have been designed to
improve and facilitate IETF document flow processing. It specifies a
set of procedures under which a working group chair or secretary
serves as the primary Document Shepherd for a document that has been
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submitted to the IESG for publication. Before this, the Area
Director responsible for the working group has traditionally filled
the shepherding role.
A Document Shepherd's responsibilities include:
o Providing the Document Shepherd Write-Up accompanying a document
that is forwarded to the IESG when publication is requested.
o During AD Evaluation by the Responsible Area Director, managing
the discussion between the editors, the working group, and the
Responsible Area Director.
o During IESG evaluation, following up on all IESG feedback
("DISCUSS" and "COMMENT" items) related to the shepherded
document.
o Following up on IANA and RFC Editor requests in the post-approval
shepherding of the document.
In summary, a Document Shepherd continues to care for a shepherded
document during its post-WG lifetime just as he or she has cared for
it while responsible for the document in the working group.
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Table of Contents
1. Introduction . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 4
2. Terminology . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 5
3. Process Description . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 5
3.1. Document Shepherd Write-Up . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 6
3.2. Document Shepherding during AD Evaluation . . . . . . . . 10
3.3. Document Shepherding during IESG Evaluation . . . . . . . 11
4. Shepherding the Document's IANA Actions . . . . . . . . . . . 14
5. Document Shepherding after IESG Approval . . . . . . . . . . . 15
6. When Not to Use the Document Shepherding Process . . . . . . . 16
7. Security Considerations . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 16
8. IANA Considerations . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 16
9. Acknowledgments . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 17
10. Informative References . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 17
Appendix A. Example Document Announcement Write-Ups . . . . . . . 18
A.1. Example Document Announcement Write-Up for
draft-ietf-avt-rtp-midi-format . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 18
A.2. Example Document Announcement Write-Up for
draft-ietf-imss-ip-over-fibre-channel . . . . . . . . . . 19
Appendix B. Working Documents . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 20
Authors' Addresses . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 20
Intellectual Property and Copyright Statements . . . . . . . . . . 22
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1. Introduction
Early in 2004, the IESG undertook several experiments aimed at
evaluating whether any of the proposed changes to the IETF document
flow process would yield qualitative improvements in document
throughput and quality. One such experiment, referred to as the
"PROTO process" or "PROTO" (because it was created by the "PROcess
and TOols" or PROTO [PROTO] team, is a set of methodologies designed
to involve working group chairs or secretaries more directly in their
documents' approval life cycle. In particular, the PROTO team
focused on improvements to the part of a document's life cycle that
occurs after the working group and document editor have forwarded it
to the IESG for publication.
By the end of 2004, the IESG had evaluated the utility of the PROTO
methodologies based on data obtained through several pilot projects
that had run throughout the year, and subsequently decided to adopt
the PROTO process for all documents and working groups. This
document describes this process.
The methodologies developed and piloted by the PROTO team focus on
the working group chair or secretary as the primary Document
Shepherd. The primary objective of this document shepherding process
is to improve document-processing throughput and document quality by
enabling a partnership between the Responsible Area Director and the
Document Shepherd. In particular, this partnership has the explicit
goal of enfranchising the Document Shepherd while at the same time
offloading a specific part of the follow-up work that has
traditionally been responsibility of the Responsible Area Director.
The Responsible Area Director has tens or many tens of documents to
follow, while the Document Shepherd has only a few at a time.
Flowing the responsibility to the working group level can ensure more
attention and more timely response.
Consequently, the document shepherding process includes follow-up
work during all document-processing stages after Working Group Last
Call, i.e., during AD Evaluation of a document, during IESG
evaluation, and during post-approval processing by IANA and the RFC
Editor. In these stages, it is the responsibility of the Document
Shepherd to track and follow up on feedback received on a document
from all relevant parties.
The Document Shepherd is usually a chair of the working group that
has produced the document. In consultation with the Responsible Area
Director, the chairs may instead decide to appoint the working group
secretary as the responsible Document Shepherd.
The remainder of this document is organised as follows: Section 3
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outlines the overall document shepherding process. Section 3.1
describes the Document Shepherd Write-Up that accompanies the
publication request of a document. Section 3.2 describes the AD
Evaluation shepherding process and Section 3.3 describes IESG DISCUSS
shepherding. Finally, Section 6 describes those cases in which the
document shepherding process should not be used.
2. Terminology
The key words "MUST", "MUST NOT", "REQUIRED", "SHALL", "SHALL NOT",
"SHOULD", "SHOULD NOT", "RECOMMENDED", "MAY", and "OPTIONAL" in this
document are to be interpreted as described in BCP 14, RFC 2119
[RFC2119].
3. Process Description
The document shepherding process consists of the following tasks:
o Providing the Document Shepherd Write-Up accompanying a document
that is forwarded to the IESG when publication is requested, as
described in Section 3.1.
o During AD Evaluation of the document by the Responsible Area
Director, managing the discussion between the editors, the working
group and the Responsible Area Director, as described in
Section 3.2.
o During IESG evaluation, following up on all IESG feedback
("DISCUSS" and "COMMENT" items) related to the shepherded
document, as described in Section 3.3.
o Following up on IANA and RFC Editor requests as described in
Section 4 and Section 5.
The shepherd must keep the document moving forward, communicating
about it with parties who review and comment it. The shepherd must
obtain the working group's consensus for any substantive proposed
changes. The shepherd is the leader for the document and for the
working group, and maintains a critical and technical perspective.
In summary, the Document Shepherd continues to care for a shepherded
document during its post-WG lifetime just as he or she has done while
responsible for the document in the working group.
Before any document shepherding takes place, a single Document
Shepherd MUST be identified for a document (he or she will be named
in the Document Shepherd Write-Up) . Frequently, the chairs and the
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Responsible Area Director will decide that the working group will
adopt the PROTO process for all their future documents. After that
decision, the chairs, in consultation with the Responsible Area
Director, decide on who should act as Document Shepherd for any given
document. This is typically and by default one of the chairs of the
working group. In consultation with the Responsible Area Director,
the chairs MAY also decide to appoint the working group secretary as
Document Shepherd for a given document. The Document Shepherd SHOULD
NOT be an editor of the shepherded document.
It is intended that the Document Shepherd role is filled by one
person during the entire shepherding process. However, situations
may occur when the Document Shepherd role may be reassigned to
different persons during the lifetime of a document. It is up to the
chairs and Responsible Area Director to identify situations when this
may become necessary, and then consult to appoint a new Document
Shepherd.
It is important to note that the document shepherding process only
applies to documents that are the product of a working group. It
does not apply to documents that originate elsewhere. Additionally,
Section 6 discusses other instances in which the document shepherding
process does not apply.
3.1. Document Shepherd Write-Up
When a working group decides that a document is ready for submission
to the IESG for publication, it is the task of the Document Shepherd
to complete a "Document Shepherd Write-Up" for the document.
There are two parts to this task. First, the Document Shepherd
answers questions (1.a) to (1.i) below to give the Responsible Area
Director insight into the working group process that applied to this
document. Note that while these questions may appear redundant in
some cases, they are written to elicit information that the
Responsible Area Director must be aware of (to this end, pointers to
relevant entries in the WG archive are helpful). The goal here is to
inform the Responsible Area Director about any issues that may have
come up in IETF meetings, on the mailing list, or in private
communication that they should be aware of prior to IESG evaluation
of the shepherded document. Any significant issues mentioned in the
questionnaire will probably lead to a follow-up discussion with the
Responsible Area Director.
The second part of the task is to prepare the "Document Announcement
Write-Up" that is input to both the ballot for the IESG telechat and
to the eventual IETF-wide announcement message. Item number (1.i)
describes the elements of the Document Announcement Write-Up.
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A final sentence of the Document Announcement Write-Up, simply placed
as a line at the end of the "Document Quality" section, can state the
names of the Document Shepherd and the Responsible Area Director,
because the announcement will not otherwise acknowledge them. The
Document Shepherd SHOULD add this information and the Responsible
Area Director SHOULD add it if it is not already there.
Some examples of Document Announcement Write-Ups are included in
Appendix A, and there are many more examples with subject lines such
as "Protocol Action" and "Document Action" in the IETF-announce
mailing list archive.
(1.a) Who is the Document Shepherd for this document? Has the
Document Shepherd personally reviewed this version of the
document and, in particular, does he or she believe this
version is ready for forwarding to the IESG for publication?
(1.b) Has the document had adequate review both from key WG members
and from key non-WG members? Does the Document Shepherd have
any concerns about the depth or breadth of the reviews that
have been performed?
(1.c) Does the Document Shepherd have concerns that the document
needs more review from a particular or broader perspective,
e.g., security, operational complexity, someone familiar with
AAA, internationalization or XML?
(1.d) Does the Document Shepherd have any specific concerns or
issues with this document that the Responsible Area Director
and/or the IESG should be aware of? For example, perhaps he
or she is uncomfortable with certain parts of the document, or
has concerns whether there really is a need for it. In any
event, if the WG has discussed those issues and has indicated
that it still wishes to advance the document, detail those
concerns here.
(1.e) How solid is the WG consensus behind this document? Does it
represent the strong concurrence of a few individuals, with
others being silent, or does the WG as a whole understand and
agree with it?
(1.f) Has anyone threatened an appeal or otherwise indicated extreme
discontent? If so, please summarise the areas of conflict in
separate email messages to the Responsible Area Director. (It
should be in a separate email because this questionnaire is
entered into the ID Tracker.)
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(1.g) Has the Document Shepherd personally verified that the
document satisfies all ID nits? (See
http://www.ietf.org/ID-Checklist.html and
http://tools.ietf.org/tools/idnits/). Boilerplate checks are
not enough; this check needs to be thorough. Has the document
met all formal review criteria it needs to, such as the MIB
Doctor, media type and URI type reviews?
(1.h) Has the document split its references into normative and
informative? Are there normative references to documents that
are not ready for advancement or are otherwise in an unclear
state? If such normative references exist, what is the
strategy for their completion? Are there normative references
that are downward references, as described in [RFC3967]? If
so, list these downward references to support the Area
Director in the Last Call procedure for them [RFC3967].
(1.i) Has the Document Shepherd verified that the document IANA
consideration section exists and is consistent with the body
of the document? If the document specifies protocol
extensions, are reservations requested in appropriate IANA
registries? Are the IANA registries clearly identified? If
the document creates a new registry, does it define the
proposed initial contents of the registry and an allocation
procedure for future registrations? Does it suggested a
reasonable name for the new registry? See
[I-D.narten-iana-considerations-rfc2434bis]. If the document
describes an Expert Review process has Shepherd conferred with
the Responsible Area Director so that the IESG can appoint the
needed Expert during the IESG Evaluation?
(1.j) Has the Document Shepherd verified that sections of the
document that are written in a formal language, such as XML
code, BNF rules, MIB definitions, etc., validate correctly in
an automated checker?
(1.k) The IESG approval announcement includes a Document
Announcement Write-Up. Please provide such a Document
Announcement Writeup? Recent examples can be found in the
"Action" announcements for approved documents. The approval
announcement contains the following sections:
Technical Summary
Relevant content can frequently be found in the abstract
and/or introduction of the document. If not, this may be
an indication that there are deficiencies in the abstract
or introduction.
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Working Group Summary
Was there anything in WG process that is worth noting? For
example, was there controversy about particular points or
were there decisions where the consensus was particularly
rough?
Document Quality
Are there existing implementations of the protocol? Have a
significant number of vendors indicated their plan to
implement the specification? Are there any reviewers that
merit special mention as having done a thorough review,
e.g., one that resulted in important changes or a
conclusion that the document had no substantive issues? If
there was a MIB Doctor, Media Type or other expert review,
what was its course (briefly)? In the case of a Media Type
review, on what date was the request posted?
Personnel
Who is the Document Shepherd for this document? Who is the
Responsible Area Director?
The Document Shepherd MUST send the Document Shepherd Write-Up to the
Responsible Area Director and iesg-secretary@ietf.org together with
the request to publish the document. The Document Shepherd SHOULD
also send the entire Document Shepherd Write-up to the working group
mailing list. If the Document Shepherd feels that information which
may prove to be sensitive, lead to possible appeals or is personal
information needs to be written up, it SHOULD be sent in direct email
to the Responsible Area Director, because the Document Shepherd
Write-Up is published openly in the tracker. Question 1(f) of the
Write-Up covers any material of this nature and specifies this more
confidential handling.
The Document Shepherd Write-Up is entered into the ID Tracker
[IDTRACKER] as a "Comment." The name and email address of the
Document Shepherd are entered into the ID Tracker, currently as a
"Brief Note" (this may change in the future). The email address of
the Document Shepherd MUST also be added to the "State or Version
Change Notice To" field (typically the email addresses of all working
group chairs, authors and the Secretary will be added).
Entering the name and email of the Document Shepherd into the ID
Tracker is REQUIRED to ensure that he or she will be copied on the
email exchange between the editors, chairs, the IESG, the IESG
secretariat, IANA and the RFC Editor during the review and approval
process. There are still manual steps required for these parties to
ensure they include the Document Shepherd, but it is hoped that in
future, automated tools will ensure that Document Shepherds (and
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others) receive necessary communications.
The contact information for the Document Shepherd is also important
for the Gen-ART [GEN-ART] Directorate and other directorates, so they
can know to whom to address reviews, in addition to the Responsible
Area Director.
3.2. Document Shepherding during AD Evaluation
The steps for document shepherding during AD Evaluation are as
follows:
(2.a) The Responsible Area Director reads, evaluates and comments on
the document, as is the case when not using the document
shepherding process. If the Responsible Area Director
determines that the document is ready for IESG Evaluation, he
or she indicates this to the Document Shepherd and the
document shepherding process continues as described in
Section 3.3.
(2.b) If the Responsible Area Director has identified issues with a
document that must be addressed before IESG Evaluation can
commence, he or she sends a full evaluation to the Document
Shepherd and SHOULD also enter the review into the ID Tracker.
(2.c) The Document Shepherd reads the AD Evaluation comments, making
very certain that all comments are understood, so that it is
possible to follow up on them with the editors and working
group. If there is some uncertainty as to what is requested,
this SHOULD be resolved with the Responsible Area Director.
(2.d) The Document Shepherd sends the AD Evaluation comments to the
editors and to the working group mailing list, in order to
have a permanent record of the comments. It is RECOMMENDED
that the Document Shepherd solicit from the editors an
estimate on when the required changes will be complete and a
revised document can be expected. Working groups that use
issue tracking SHOULD also record the issues (and eventually
their resolution) in their issue tracker.
(2.e) During the production of a revised document that addresses the
AD Evaluation comments, it is strongly RECOMMENDED that the
editors keep a list showing how each comment was addressed and
what the revised text is. It is strongly RECOMMENDED that
this list be forwarded to the Responsible Area Director
together with the revised document.
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(2.f) In the event that the editors or working group disagrees with
a comment raised by the Responsible Area Director or has
previously considered and dismissed the issue, the Document
Shepherd MUST resolve the issue with the Responsible Area
Director before a revised document can be submitted.
(2.g) The Document Shepherd iterates with the editors (and working
group, if required) until all outstanding issues have been
resolved and a revised document is available. At this point,
the Document Shepherd notifies the Responsible Area Director
and provides him or her with the revised document, the summary
of issues and the resulting text changes.
(2.h) The Responsible Area Director verifies that the issues he or
she found during AD Evaluation are resolved in the revised
version of the document by starting the process described in
this section at step (2.a).
3.3. Document Shepherding during IESG Evaluation
During IESG Evaluation of a document, ADs can bring forward two kinds
of remarks about a document: DISCUSS item and COMMENT items. A
DISCUSS blocks a document's approval process until it has been
resolved; a COMMENT does not. This section details the steps that a
Document Shepherd takes to resolve any DISCUSS and COMMENT items
brought forward against a shepherded document during IESG Evaluation.
Note that DISCUSS and COMMENT items are occasionally written in a
manner that makes their intent unclear. In these cases, the Document
Shepherd SHOULD start a discussion with the ADs who brought the items
up to clarify their intent, keeping the Responsible Area Director
informed. If this fails to clarify the intent, the Responsible Area
Director may need to work towards a clarification inside the IESG.
(3.a) Leading up to the IESG conference call, the Document Shepherd
may see emails about the document from directorate reviewers
on behalf of one or more ADs and also emailed copies of
DISCUSS and COMMENT items entered into the ID Tracker. The
Document Shepherd SHOULD immediately begin to work on
resolving DISCUSS and COMMENT items with the ADs who have
raised them, keeping the Responsible Area Director copied on
the email exchange, so that he or she is able to support the
the activity during the conference call. When dealing with
directorate reviews, the Document Shepherd MUST involve the
ADs to whom these directorates report to ensure that these ADs
consider the review comments that need resolving.
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(3.b) Immediately following the conference call, when the document
changes state from the "IESG Evaluation" state to one of the
states requiring Document Shepherd action, e.g., "IESG
Evaluation: Revised ID Needed" or "IESG Evaluation: AD
Followup", the Document Shepherd will receive email. A state
of "AD Followup" typically signifies the Responsible Area
Director's hope that a resolution may be possible through a
continued discussion or (more usually) through a small set of
changes as "Notes to the RFC Editor."
Note that there may be very exceptional cases when DISCUSS
items are registered after an IESG conference call. In these
cases, the AD who has raised the DISCUSS MUST notify the
Document Shepherd about it. (The notification facility in the
ID Tracker is very convenient for this purpose and also for
the cases where the DISCUSS and COMMENT items are updated
after they are partially resolved.)
(3.c) The Document Shepherd then queries the ID Tracker to collect
the remaining DISCUSS and COMMENT items raised against the
document. The Document Shepherd analyses these items and
initialises contact with the ADs who have placed them. The
Responsible Area Director MUST be copied on all correspondence
related to active DISCUSS or COMMENT items. This does not
place the Responsible Area Director in the critical path
towards a resolution, but should keep him or her informed
about the state of the discussion.
+-------+ +-------+ +-------+
| (3.b) | -----------> | (3.c) | ------------> | (3.d) |
+-------+ Comments +-------+ Comments +-------+
collected /|\ | understood
| |
| | Comments not fully understood
| | (Further AD/Document Shepherd
| | discussion required)
+---+
(3.d) The Document Shepherd then coordinates the resolution of
DISCUSS and COMMENT items and builds a consistent
interpretation of the comments. This step is similar to much
of the process described in Section 3.2.
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+-------+ +-------+
| (3.c) | ---------------> | (3.d) |
+-------+ Consistent +-------+
/|\ interpretation |
| | Further AD/Document Shepherd
| | discussion required
+--------------------------+
(3.e) The Document Shepherd then communicates the DISCUSS and
COMMENT items to the document editors and the working group,
alerting them of any changes to the document that have
accumulated during IESG processing, such as "Notes to the RFC
Editor." If any changes will be substantive, the Document
Shepherd, in consultation with the Responsible Area Director,
as during other stages, MUST seek working group consensus.
(3.f) After the editors resolve the DISCUSS and COMMENT items, the
Document Shepherd reviews the resulting new version of the
document, which will be a revised document, a set of "Notes to
the RFC Editor", or both, using his or her technical expertise
to ensure that all raised DISCUSS and COMMENT issues have been
resolved.
Note that the Document Shepherd MAY also suggest resolutions
to DISCUSS and COMMENT items, enter them into an issue
tracker, or perform other steps to streamline the resolution
of the evaluation comments. It is very important to resolve
the comments in a timely way, while the discussion is current
for everyone involved.
(3.g) When the Document Shepherd is satisfied that the revised
document addresses the evaluation comments, he or she
communicates the resolution to the Responsible Area Director
and the ADs that had raised the DISCUSS and COMMENT items.
(3.h) Each AD who had raised a DISCUSS checks whether the
communicated resolution addresses his or her items. If it
does, the AD will clear the DISCUSS. It it does not, the AD
notifies the Document Shepherd and adds information to the ID
Tracker explaining why the DISCUSS was not resolved. The
Document Shepherd informs the working group accordingly.
(COMMENT items need not be checked and cleared, because they
do not block the document, but ADs are encouraged to do so.)
If a DISCUSS was not resolved to the satisfaction of the AD
that has raised it or the Responsible Area Director, two
possibilities exist:
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(a) The process returns to step (3.d), or
(b) If no progress can be made on the resolution of the
DISCUSS with the AD who has raised it, despite
clarification and additional involvement of the
Responsible Area Director, the Document Shepherd and
working group might as a very last resort consider an
appeal in accordance with the procedures described in
[RFC2026] and referred to in [RFC2418]. The Document
Shepherd SHOULD review the IESG's Discuss Criteria
guidelines [I-D.iesg-discuss-criteria] and discuss with
the Responsible Area Director whether there might be
consideration against the unresolved DISCUSS by the rest
of the IESG due to these guidelines.
Once the process above has cleared all DISCUSS items, document
shepherding continues with step (3.i).
(3.i) The Responsible Area Director moves the document to the
"Approved - Announcement to be sent" state in the ID Tracker.
If he or she deems the changes to the revised document
significant, there may be a new WG last call, or possibly a
new IETF last call. The document goes through a new full IESG
Evaluation process if there is a new IETF last call.
4. Shepherding the Document's IANA Actions
IETF working group documents often include considerations requiring
actions by the IANA, such as creating a new registry or adding
information to an existing registry, perhaps after consulting an
IESG-appointed Expert. Sometimes the actions required are by the
IESG, such as appointment of a new Expert. IANA-related processing
may also include a specified type of Expert review, such as review of
proposed MIME media types on the designated ietf-types mailing list.
The IANA reviews IETF documents and requests responses at any or all
of the following times: in response to IETF Last Call, during the
IESG Evaluation review of the document, and at the time when the IANA
performs actions in its web-based registry for the document, usually
but not always after IESG approval of the document. More details of
the IANA process and IETF interaction are found in
[I-D.narten-iana-considerations-rfc2434bis].
Whenever an IANA request comes, in whatever period, the requester
from IANA MUST ensure that the Document Shepherd and the Responsible
Area Director both receive the request. The Document Shepherd is
responsible for responding as rapidly as possible. He or she should
discuss requests that introduce any possible concerns with the
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Working Group. The Document Shepherd and the Responsible Area
Director may decide in consultation that an IANA request leads to a
change that needs additional review or approval.
In general, the Working Group Shepherd ensures that the IANA process
completes, checks that the registry is correct and that the IANA
Matrix (www.iana.org/numbers.html) is complete and consistent, and
troubleshoots when all is not well. At the end of IANA processing,
the Document Shepherd should be sure that the RFC Editor has
acknowledged IANA conclusion, that the handoff has been made.
In summary, the task of shepherding the IANA actions is overlooked
but is as important to coordinate and manage as all the other
document reviews the Document Shepherd has managed. As with those,
the Document Shepherd contributes greatly to quality and timeliness
of the document by effective and responsive shepherding of the IANA
requests.
5. Document Shepherding after IESG Approval
After the IESG Evaluation and resolution described in Section 3.3,
the IESG approves the document, and the Responsible Area Director
uses the tracker to ask for any final changes to the Document
Announcement Write-Up and to ask for it to be issued. The Document
Shepherd may have some edits for the Responsible Area Director, such
as minor Notes to the RFC Editor, and this is the time to consult and
provide them.
The announcement goes to the general community and to the RFC Editor,
and now the Document Shepherd (identified in the Announcemen
Write-Up) continues to shepherd the document through its technical
publication. The RFC Editor currently makes a number of types of
requests to the authors, Document Shepherd and Responsible Area
Director. The Document Shepherd SHOULD lead in responding to the RFC
editor and shepherding the document through its technical
publication, through the post-approval period. The RFC Editor
request types include: editorial queries about dangling, missing,
informative and normative citations (good shepherding should try to
pre-catch these, but they happen); requests for unedited source, e.g.
xml; occasional technical comments; and copy-edits for review and
close scrutiny by the authors (AUTH48). On the latter, the Document
Shepherd SHOULD lead in checking that copy-edits have in no case
affected a consensus wording of the working group which prepared the
document, and in bringing speed to this checking by multiple co-
authors. The Document Shepherd also consults with the Responsible
Area Director in reviewing proposed post-approval changes to the
document by any authors. These may require Area Director approval,
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and they often need to be presented to the working group for consent
if not a full consensus procedure. As in other periods of document
review, the Document Shepherd provides attentiveness and timeliness
by serving as the informed representative of the document and helping
its advancement and its integrity.
6. When Not to Use the Document Shepherding Process
As mentioned in Section 3, the Document Shepherd SHOULD NOT be an
editor of the shepherded document. If this cannot be avoided by
making another working group chair or secretary the Document
Shepherd, the document shepherding process SHOULD NOT be used. There
are several other cases in which the document shepherding process
SHOULD NOT be used. These include:
1. Cases, where the Document Shepherd is the primary author or
editor of a large percentage of the documents produced by the
working group.
2. Cases, where the Responsible Area Director expects communication
difficulties with the Document Shepherd (either due to
experience, strong views stated by the Document Shepherd, or
other issues).
3. Cases, where the working group itself is either very old, losing
energy, or winding down, i.e., cases, where it would not be
productive to initiate new processes or procedures.
Finally, note that other cases exist in which using the document
shepherding process may not be productive. The final determination
as to whether to use the document shepherding process or not is left
to the Responsible Area Director. If the document shepherding
process is not used, the Responsible Area Director acts as Document
Shepherd, just as he or she did in the past.
7. Security Considerations
This document specifies a change to IETF document-processing
procedures. As such, it neither raises nor considers protocol-
specific security issues.
8. IANA Considerations
This document creates no new requirements on IANA namespaces or other
IANA requirements.
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9. Acknowledgments
This document is the product of PROTO team, which includes the
authors as well as Bill Fenner, Barbara Fuller, and Margaret
Wasserman. Aaron Falk worked actively in PROTO till the start of
2006 and worked on earlier versions of the document.
The Document Shepherd Write-Up originated in an idea by John Klensin.
Thomas Narten and Margaret Wasserman implemented it for the entire
Internet Area, and their template was the basis of the version used
today.
Colin Perkins wrote the Document Announcement Write-Up for
draft-ietf-avt-rtp-midi-format included in Appendix A.1. David Black
wrote the Document Announcement Write-Up for
draft-ietf-imss-ip-over-fibre-channel included in Appendix A.2.
Frank Ellermann and Olafur Gudmundsson have suggested improvements to
the document during IETF Last Call.
10. Informative References
[RFC2026] Bradner, S., "The Internet Standards Process -- Revision
3", BCP 9, RFC 2026, October 1996.
[RFC2119] Bradner, S., "Key words for use in RFCs to Indicate
Requirement Levels", BCP 14, RFC 2119, March 1997.
[RFC2418] Bradner, S., "IETF Working Group Guidelines and
Procedures", BCP 25, RFC 2418, September 1998.
[RFC3967] Bush, R. and T. Narten, "Clarifying when Standards Track
Documents may Refer Normatively to Documents at a Lower
Level", BCP 97, RFC 3967, December 2004.
[I-D.iesg-discuss-criteria]
Peterson, J., "DISCUSS Criteria in IESG Review",
draft-iesg-discuss-criteria-02 (work in progress),
February 2006.
[I-D.narten-iana-considerations-rfc2434bis]
Narten, T. and H. Alvestrand, "Guidelines for Writing an
IANA Considerations Section in RFCs",
draft-narten-iana-considerations-rfc2434bis-05 (work in
progress), September 2006.
[IDTRACKER]
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"The IETF Internet-Draft Tracker", Web
Application: https://datatracker.ietf.org/, 2002.
[PROTO] "The IESG PROcess and TOols (PROTO) Team", Web
Page: http://psg.com/~mrw/PROTO-Team, 2004.
[GEN-ART] "The General Area Review Team (GEN-ART)", Web Page:
http://www.alvestrand.no/ietf/gen/review-guidelines.html,
2005.
Appendix A. Example Document Announcement Write-Ups
This appendix includes two examples of Document Announcement Write-
Ups. Many more examples with Subject lines such as "Protocol Action"
and "Document Action" can be found in the IETF-announce mailing list
archive.
A.1. Example Document Announcement Write-Up for
draft-ietf-avt-rtp-midi-format
Technical Summary
These documents define the RTP Payload format for MIDI (Musical
Instrument Digital Interface), and additional guidelines on
implementation specifically concerning the timing of reception and
transmission for best performance in different applications. MIDI
is a real-time media, which however is brittle to losses and
errors. Therefore the RTP payload format defines recovery
journals as a way of avoiding persistent audible errors, and
discusses congestion control handling for these journals.
The RTP payload for MIDI encodes the broad range of MIDI commands.
The format is suitable for interactive applications (such as
network musical performance) and content-delivery (such as file
streaming).
Working Group Summary
There is consensus in the WG to publish these documents.
Document Quality
This RTP Payload format has been implemented during the
development of the specification and successfully tested over an
IP network between two remote sites, thus showing that the
technical solution is successfully working. It has been reviewed
by the MIDI Manufacturers Association and their comments have been
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addressed. Allison Mankin reviewed the document for the IESG,
including a careful review with the editor of the media types, in
parallel with ietf-types list review requested on 2006-01-08,
which raised no issues.
Magnus Westerlund and Colin Perkins jointly shepherded these
documents.
A.2. Example Document Announcement Write-Up for
draft-ietf-imss-ip-over-fibre-channel
Technical Summary
This document specifies the encapsulation of IPv6, IPv4 and ARP
packets over Fibre Channel. This document also specifies the
methods for forming IPv6 link-local addresses and statelessly
autoconfigured IPv6 addresses on Fibre Channel networks, and a
mechanism to perform IPv4 address resolution over Fibre Channel
networks. This document (when published as RFC) obsoletes RFC2625
and RFC3831.
Working Group Summary
This document has been reviewed by Fibre Channel experts in
Technical Committee T11 (Fibre Channel standards organization) in
addition to members of the IMSS WG. There is solid support for
this document both in the WG and from T11.
Document Quality
This document replaces and consolidates two separate RFCs on IPv4
over Fibre Channel (RFC 2625) and IPv6 over Fibre Channel (RFC
3831). Most of its technical content is unchanged from those
RFCs. The technical changes that have been made are primarily
based on implementation experience.
The protocol has been reviewed for the IESG by David L. Black (WG
chair).
Also Bert Wijnen has reviewed this document for the IESG.
In addition, Brian Haberman has done a review for the INT Area as
requested by WG-chair (David Black) via Margaret Wasserman.
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Appendix B. Working Documents
(This section should be removed by the RFC editor before
publication.)
The current working documents for this document are available at this
web site:
http://tools.ietf.org/wg/proto/
draft-ietf-proto-wgchair-doc-shepherding/
Authors' Addresses
Henrik Levkowetz
Torsgatan 71
Stockholm S-113 37
Sweden
Phone: +46 708 32 16 08
Email: henrik@levkowetz.com
David Meyer
1225 Kincaid St
Eugene, OR 97403
USA
Phone: +1 541 346 1747
Email: dmm@1-4-5.net
Lars Eggert
NEC Network Laboratories
Kurfuerstenanlage 36
Heidelberg 69115
Germany
Phone: +49 6221 4342 143
Fax: +49 6221 4342 155
Email: lars.eggert@netlab.nec.de
URI: http://www.netlab.nec.de/
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Allison Mankin
Phone: +1-301-728-7199
Email: mankin@psg.com
URI: http://www.psg.com/~mankin
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Full Copyright Statement
Copyright (C) The Internet Society (2006).
This document is subject to the rights, licenses and restrictions
contained in BCP 78, and except as set forth therein, the authors
retain all their rights.
This document and the information contained herein are provided on an
"AS IS" basis and THE CONTRIBUTOR, THE ORGANIZATION HE/SHE REPRESENTS
OR IS SPONSORED BY (IF ANY), THE INTERNET SOCIETY AND THE INTERNET
ENGINEERING TASK FORCE DISCLAIM ALL WARRANTIES, EXPRESS OR IMPLIED,
INCLUDING BUT NOT LIMITED TO ANY WARRANTY THAT THE USE OF THE
INFORMATION HEREIN WILL NOT INFRINGE ANY RIGHTS OR ANY IMPLIED
WARRANTIES OF MERCHANTABILITY OR FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE.
Intellectual Property
The IETF takes no position regarding the validity or scope of any
Intellectual Property Rights or other rights that might be claimed to
pertain to the implementation or use of the technology described in
this document or the extent to which any license under such rights
might or might not be available; nor does it represent that it has
made any independent effort to identify any such rights. Information
on the procedures with respect to rights in RFC documents can be
found in BCP 78 and BCP 79.
Copies of IPR disclosures made to the IETF Secretariat and any
assurances of licenses to be made available, or the result of an
attempt made to obtain a general license or permission for the use of
such proprietary rights by implementers or users of this
specification can be obtained from the IETF on-line IPR repository at
http://www.ietf.org/ipr.
The IETF invites any interested party to bring to its attention any
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Acknowledgment
Funding for the RFC Editor function is provided by the IETF
Administrative Support Activity (IASA).
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