[rfc-i] Fwd: I-D ACTION:draft-hoffman-rfc-author-guide-00.txt

[Alex Rousskov]

On Tue, 7 Sep 2004, Tony Hansen wrote:

> Alex Rousskov wrote:
>
>> IMHO, RFC Editor SHOULD NOT accept drafts that require 
>> modifications. Nor should IESG review such drafts, for that matter. 
>> It should be authors responsibility to comply with all the rules, 
>> without spending precious IETF resources. And RFC Editor and IESG 
>> should be prohibited from wasting time on fixing drafts to comply 
>> with the rules.
>
> While this is a fine sentiment for those I-Ds that are ready to go 
> to the IESG and RFC Editor, you need to differentiate those from -00 
> drafts, WG-only drafts and other "thought exercise" drafts that 
> won't ever be published as RFCs. There are numerous reasons for the 
> existence of such I-Ds and they do NOT need to be held to the same 
> standards as those intended for RFC publication.

Absolutely. My statement only refers to RFC Editor and IESG reviews. 
Posted drafts not submitted for publication have pretty much nothing 
to do with RFC Editor and IESG reviews and are only subject to a few 
basic requirements currently manually enforced by the Secretariat 
(e.g., the version must be correct, and IPR statement must be 
present).

The IETF TOOLs team is working on draft posting automation. The 
interface will ask the submitter to specify whether the draft revision 
in question needs to be submitted for publication (besides being 
posted). The set of automated checks and actions will depend on the 
answer.

> For the WG I-Ds, I think each WG chair should be looking at the 
> documents from the id-nits and rfc-nits point of view and require 
> revisions based on those before allowing them to be passed on to the 
> IESG.
>
> I'm not sure what to do to help increase the RFC-compliance of 
> NON-WG I-Ds that are destined for RFC publication.

The interface that TOOLs team is working on will be used for virtually 
all IETF drafts (WG and not). The solution I currently advocate is to 
validate the draft and _warn_ the submitter about detected violations. 
This way, virtually any submitter will know what rules their draft 
violates. That would be a big step forward, IMO.

The next step, requiring change in IETF practices (if not rules) would 
be to request that RFC Editor and IESG refuse (by default) to review 
drafts that do not pass IETF draft validator.

Alex.