# Document Shepherd Write-Up for Group Documents
*This version is dated 4 July 2022.*
Thank you for your service as a document shepherd. Among the responsibilities is
answering the questions in this write-up to give helpful context to Last Call
and Internet Engineering Steering Group ([IESG][1]) reviewers, and your
diligence in completing it is appreciated. The full role of the shepherd is
further described in [RFC 4858][2]. You will need the cooperation of the authors
and editors to complete these checks.
Note that some numbered items contain multiple related questions; please be sure
to answer all of them.
## Document History
1. Does the working group (WG) consensus represent the strong concurrence of a
few individuals, with others being silent, or did it reach broad agreement?
Quite broad agreement, of those who participated. It was decided to make it
experimental as it is a significant change to IMAP semantics.
There are industry players who have already implemented an initial pass at this,
and we're keen to publish it so they can interoperate, while remaining as an
experimental extension.
2. Was there controversy about particular points, or were there decisions where
the consensus was particularly rough?
The main areas of discussion were around interaction with all the other IMAP
extensions and whether they had been sufficiently thought through, but there
was no real controversy.
3. Has anyone threatened an appeal or otherwise indicated extreme discontent? If
so, please summarize the areas of conflict in separate email messages to the
responsible Area Director. (It should be in a separate email because this
questionnaire is publicly available.)
No.
4. For protocol documents, are there existing implementations of the contents of
the document? Have a significant number of potential implementers indicated
plans to implement? Are any existing implementations reported somewhere,
either in the document itself (as [RFC 7942][3] recommends) or elsewhere
(where)?
There are implementations at Yahoo, Google, and Microsoft - and at least
some pre-release experimentation has been done by Apple.
## Additional Reviews
5. Do the contents of this document closely interact with technologies in other
IETF working groups or external organizations, and would it therefore benefit
from their review? Have those reviews occurred? If yes, describe which
reviews took place.
No, there's no other reviews that would be relevant.
6. Describe how the document meets any required formal expert review criteria,
such as the MIB Doctor, YANG Doctor, media type, and URI type reviews.
There are no formal reviews required.
7. If the document contains a YANG module, has the final version of the module
been checked with any of the [recommended validation tools][4] for syntax and
formatting validation? If there are any resulting errors or warnings, what is
the justification for not fixing them at this time? Does the YANG module
comply with the Network Management Datastore Architecture (NMDA) as specified
in [RFC 8342][5]?
N/A.
8. Describe reviews and automated checks performed to validate sections of the
final version of the document written in a formal language, such as XML code,
BNF rules, MIB definitions, CBOR's CDDL, etc.
The ABNF was validated for syntax correctness using the ABNF validator on
author-tools.
## Document Shepherd Checks
9. Based on the shepherd's review of the document, is it their opinion that this
document is needed, clearly written, complete, correctly designed, and ready
to be handed off to the responsible Area Director?
Yes, this document is clear and sufficient for an experimental standard.
10. Several IETF Areas have assembled [lists of common issues that their
reviewers encounter][6]. For which areas have such issues been identified
and addressed? For which does this still need to happen in subsequent
reviews?
No common issue review is required here.
11. What type of RFC publication is being requested on the IETF stream ([Best
Current Practice][12], [Proposed Standard, Internet Standard][13],
[Informational, Experimental or Historic][14])? Why is this the proper type
of RFC? Do all Datatracker state attributes correctly reflect this intent?
Experimental is right here because of the significant change to the IMAP model
being proposed.
12. Have reasonable efforts been made to remind all authors of the intellectual
property rights (IPR) disclosure obligations described in [BCP 79][7]? To
the best of your knowledge, have all required disclosures been filed? If
not, explain why. If yes, summarize any relevant discussion, including links
to publicly-available messages when applicable.
Yes, authors have been contacted and reminded of their IPR requirements.
Nothing has been disclosed.
13. Has each author, editor, and contributor shown their willingness to be
listed as such? If the total number of authors and editors on the front page
is greater than five, please provide a justification.
Yes. There are 4 authors who have showing willingness to be listed.
14. Document any remaining I-D nits in this document. Simply running the [idnits
tool][8] is not enough; please review the ["Content Guidelines" on
authors.ietf.org][15]. (Also note that the current idnits tool generates
some incorrect warnings; a rewrite is underway.)
No known nits.
15. Should any informative references be normative or vice-versa? See the [IESG
Statement on Normative and Informative References][16].
The only informative reference is only used in an example. The others are normative
because this document describes changes to their behaviour.
16. List any normative references that are not freely available to anyone. Did
the community have sufficient access to review any such normative
references?
All references are to other IETF documents.
17. Are there any normative downward references (see [RFC 3967][9] and [BCP
97][10]) that are not already listed in the [DOWNREF registry][17]? If so,
list them.
No.
18. Are there normative references to documents that are not ready to be
submitted to the IESG for publication or are otherwise in an unclear state?
If so, what is the plan for their completion?
No.
19. Will publication of this document change the status of any existing RFCs? If
so, does the Datatracker metadata correctly reflect this and are those RFCs
listed on the title page, in the abstract, and discussed in the
introduction? If not, explain why and point to the part of the document
where the relationship of this document to these other RFCs is discussed.
No.
20. Describe the document shepherd's review of the IANA considerations section,
especially with regard to its consistency with the body of the document.
Confirm that all aspects of the document requiring IANA assignments are
associated with the appropriate reservations in IANA registries. Confirm
that any referenced IANA registries have been clearly identified. Confirm
that each newly created IANA registry specifies its initial contents,
allocations procedures, and a reasonable name (see [RFC 8126][11]).
The text of the IANA considerations specify both the MESSAGELIMIT= and SAVELIMIT=
entries in the IMAP capabilities register, which matches the text in the rest of
the document.
21. List any new IANA registries that require Designated Expert Review for
future allocations. Are the instructions to the Designated Expert clear?
Please include suggestions of designated experts, if appropriate.
No new registries are created.