Network Working Group                           B. Carpenter
Internet Draft                                           IBM
  draft-carpenter-icar-sirs-00.txt                D. Crocker
Expires: <09-04>                                 Brandenburg
                                                  March 2004


        Careful Additional Review of Documents (CARD)
               by Senior IETF Reviewers (SIRS)

               (draft-carpenter-icar-sirs-00.txt)



     COPYRIGHT NOTICE

     If published as an RFC this document will become
     Copyright (C) The Internet Society (2003).  All Rights
     Reserved.



     ABSTRACT

     IETF specifications do not receive formal review until
     they are submitted to the IESG. Hence, significant
     problems with a specification often are not detected
     until considerable effort has been wasted and changes
     to fix the problems are difficult to add. The procedure
     described in this document is intended to solve, or
     palliate, a number of related problems that have been
     observed in the IETF process. The basic model is to
     create a team of Senior IETF Reviewers (SIRS), and have
     all documents receive a certain number of reviews by
     SIRs, prior to being submitted for publication. Review
     at a very early stage is strongly encouraged.



     STATUS OF THIS MEMO

     This document is an Internet-Draft and is in full
     conformance with all provisions of Section 10 of
     RFC2026.

     Internet-Drafts are working documents of the Internet
     Engineering Task Force (IETF), its areas, and its
     working groups.  Note that other groups may also
     distribute working documents as Internet Drafts.

     Internet-Drafts are draft documents valid for a maximum
     of six months and may be updated, replaced, or
     obsoleted by other documents at any time.  It is
     inappropriate to use Internet- Drafts as reference
     material or to cite them other than as "work in
     progress."

     The list of current Internet-Drafts can be accessed at

          http://www.ietf.org/1id-abstracts.html

     The list of Internet-Draft Shadow Directories can be
     accessed at

          http://www.ietf.org/shadow.html.



     TABLE OF CONTENTS

     1.   Introduction
     2.   SIRs
          2.1. The Body of Senior Internet Reviewers
          2.2. Obtaining SIR Participation
     3.   Carding
          3.1. Reviewing in Public
          3.2. Form of a Review
          3.3. Iterative Carding
     4.   Security considerations
     5.   Acknowledgements
     6.   Informative References
     7.   Authors' Addresses
     8.   Intellectual Property
     9.   Full Copyright Statement



     EDITORS' NOTES

     The acronym "SIR" is retained in this draft simply for reasons of
     continuity. However, feedback during an experimental period has shown
     that the community would prefer an acronym without the connotations of
     the English word "sir."

     The mechanism proposed in Section 2.1 for selecting the panel of
     reviewers led to considerable debate during the experimental period. It
     has not been fundamentally modified in this draft, but the authors
     recognize that the community may prefer a very different mechanism.

     Change marks are included, as [[---...---]], to indicate sections of
     text that differ from the -00 version of this draft.  Segments that are
     marked, but have no included text indicate that text was removed.



     DISCUSSION VENUE

     Discussion of this proposal is intended to place on the ICAR mailing
     list <mailto: icar@ietf.org>



     INTRODUCTION

     IETF specifications do not receive formal review until
     they are submitted to the IESG. Hence, significant
     problems with a specification often are not detected
     until considerable effort has been wasted and changes
     to fix the problems are difficult to add.
[[---
---]]

     The procedure described in this document is intended to
     solve, or palliate, a number of related problems that
     have been observed in the IETF process [PROBLEM]:

[[---
---]]
          *    submission of documents to the IESG that
               still have significant problems (leading
               to delay)

          *    failure to detect fundamental problems
               and Internet- wide issues at an early
               stage

     Particularly because of the second point, it is
     impossible to resolve these problems simply by
     giving additional responsibility to working groups
     themselves. An additional procedure is needed.

     The procedure specified here calls for a team of 'sirs'
     to 'card'.  The term 'card' is used for textiles and
     pubs.  The former usage removes detritus from textiles
     and prepares it for weaving.  The latter vets
     participants at the door. The term also is an acronym
     for 'Careful Additional Review of Documents.'

[[---
     The carding procedure makes no change to the formal process of IETF
     document development, review, approval, and publication. It is an
     additional procedure intended to tackle the problems listed above.

     The basic model is to create a team of Senior IETF Reviewers (SIRs, who
     need be neither male nor knighted) chosen in a way designed to create
     trust, and that all documents receive reviews by SIRs, as appropriate
     during document development. Review at a very early stage is strongly
     encouraged.
---]]

     The model is intended to be compatible with, and
     complementary to, existing mechanisms such as the
     various Directorates within the IETF and the MIB Doctor
     system.

     The remainder of this document described how the team
     of SIRs is created and refreshed, how the review
     process works, and how it is used by document authors
     and working groups to achieve their objectives.



2.   SIRS


2.1. The Body of Senior Internet Reviewers

     2.1.1.    Initial Set of SIRs

---]]
[[---
     The initial team is defined by objective criteria, to
     avoid any bias in their selection. It will consist of:

          *    all current IAB members

          *    all former IAB and IESG members, and former
               WG Chairs, who the Secretariat can contact
               and who are willing to serve

          *    all current MIB Doctors

          *    all members of existing IETF Directorates

          *    all authors of at least three RFCs, who the
               Secretariat can contact and who are willing
               to serve

          *    (other suggestions???)

     (Current IESG Area Directors are excluded from the
     pool.)

     2.1.2.    Addition and Removal of SIRs

[[---
     The team of SIRs is augmented as needed -- at least once a year year
     [schedule TBD] by a public nomination process and a voting procedure
     [TBD] among the existing SIRs.

     SIRs who do not produce at least five reviews in a given year will be
     retired from the team. In extremis, SIR status may be removed by a
     simple majority vote of the team of SIRs.
---]]


2.2. Obtaining SIR Participation

     For Working Group documents, Working Groups solicit the
     assistance of SIRs.  That is, the general IETF
     community controls who is authorized as a SIR, but WGs
     control which specific SIRs provides the formal review
     that is needed for a given document.

     A primary goal of this proposal is to ensure that
     Working Groups benefit from broad experience in the
     design of Internet technology. Hence it is entirely
     reasonable that some SIRs reviewing a given document
     should be subject matter experts. However the full set
     of input from SIRs is substantially more useful when it
     includes SIRs from other areas.  In particular, cross-
     area review makes it more likely that architectural and
     operational impacts outside of the subject matter will
     be detected.  It is therefore strongly recommended that
     WGs seek a diverse set of SIRs to participate in
     evaluations, able to cover most if not all IETF Areas
     between them.

     Each WG will make its own decision about how its SIRs
     are selected (e.g. chosen by the WG Chairs, chosen by
     the document authors concerned, etc.)

     For individual submissions, the document author(s) will
     solicit SIR reviews, according to the same principles
     applied to Working Group documents.

     There is no fixed number of SIR reviews required prior
     to submission to the IESG or the RFC Editor. However,
     it is likely that drafts with at least three positive
     reviews from SIRs in different areas will experience
     much shorter IESG review cycles than drafts with fewer
     positive reviews. Other common sense rules will apply;
     for example a MIB that has not been reviewed by a MIB
     Doctor is unlikely to be published.

     In all likelihood, Drafts without reviews will get
     worse IESG response time than today, whereas Drafts
     with reviews will be processed much more rapidly,
     especially as the IESG's confidence in the SIR
     procedure increases.



3.   CARDING


3.1. Reviewing in Public

     The current list of SIRs will be available on the IETF web site.

[[---
     Reviews are posted in two places.  One is for public discussion, such as
     in the relevant working group mailing list. These should be posted in
     segments, to nvite focused threads of discussion. The second venue is as
     a complete copy in an IETF Reviews web page.

     A WG or document author in need of reviews should be able to request
     them through the web site.
---]]


3.2. Form of a Review

[[---
[A more extensive and formalized template for reviews needs to be formulated,
to give reviewers guidance about offering comments on such things as
efficiency, operations impact, deployment/adoption issues, etc. /d]
---]]

     Each review must start with a summary statement chosen
     from or adapted from the following list:

          *    This draft is ready for publication as a
               [type] RFC.

          *    This draft is on the right track but has
               open issues, described in the review.

          *    This draft has serious issues, described
               in the review, and needs to be rethought.

          *    This draft has very fundamental issues,
               described in the review, and further work
               is not recommended.

     The length of a review will vary greatly according to
     circumstances, and it is acceptable for purely
     editorial comments to be sent privately. All
     substantive comments must be included in the public
     review.

     SIRs should review for all kinds of problems, from
     basic architectural or security issues, Internet-wide
     impact, technical nits, problems of form and format
     (such as IANA Considerations or incorrect references),
     and editorial issues. As a draft progresses from its
     initial, "-00" version towards one that is ready for
     submission, successive SIR reviews should progress from
     the general architectural level to the editorial level.

     The intention is that before a draft is submitted by a
     WG to the IESG, or by an individual to the RFC Editor,
     it has already benefited from a level of review
     equivalent to that traditionally applied by the IESG.


3.3. Iterative Carding

     The carding of textiles is an iterative process, and so
     is the carding of documents by SIRs. It is not required
     that every version of an Internet Draft should be
     submitted for SIR review. However, it is advisable to
     request reviews at the very beginning (to check for
     fundamental issues), as major technical issues are
     resolved, and again just before the document is
     submitted for IESG approval. Thus three SIR review
     cycles per document may be considered the minimum.

     Both Working Groups and individual submitters should
     realise that carding should start early (to detect and
     hopefully fix fundamental problems) and be repeated as
     often as needed (to avoid submitting inadequate
     documents to the IESG). By these means, it should be
     possible to avoid most cases where a document spends a
     long time in IESG review or, worse, is fundamentally
     unacceptable to the IESG.



4.   SECURITY CONSIDERATIONS

     This document does not directly impact the operational
     security of the Internet.



5.   ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

     Your name could go here!

     Valuable comments and ideas have come from many
     sources, especially an earlier draft by Ted Hardie and
     many members of the IETF 'problem' working group.



6.   INFORMATIVE REFERENCES

     [PROBLEM]      IETF Problem Statement, E. Davies (ed.),
                    draft-ietf-problem-issue-statement-
                    00.txt, work in progress.



7.   AUTHORS' ADDRESSES
     Brian E. Carpenter
     IBM Zurich Research Laboratory
     Saeumerstrasse 4
     8803 Rueschlikon
     Switzerland

     Email: brian@hursley.ibm.com

     Dave Crocker
     Brandenburg InternetWorking
     675 Spruce Drive
     Sunnyvale, CA  94086  USA

     Tel: +1.408.246.8253
     dcrocker@brandenburg.com



8.   INTELLECTUAL PROPERTY

     PLACEHOLDER for full IETF IPR Statement if needed.



9.   FULL COPYRIGHT STATEMENT

     Copyright (C) The Internet Society (2003).  All Rights
     Reserved.

     This document and translations of it may be copied and
     furnished to others, and derivative works that comment
     on or otherwise explain it or assist in its
     implementation may be prepared, copied, published and
     distributed, in whole or in part, without restriction
     of any kind, provided that the above copyright notice
     and this paragraph are included on all such copies and
     derivative works.  However, this document itself may
     not be modified in any way, such as by removing the
     copyright notice or references to the Internet Society
     or other Internet organizations, except as needed for
     the purpose of developing Internet standards in which
     case the procedures for copyrights defined in the
     Internet Standards process must be followed, or as
     required to translate it into languages other than
     English.

     The limited permissions granted above are perpetual and
     will not be revoked by the Internet Society or its
     successors or assigns.

     This document and the information contained herein is
     provided on an "AS IS" basis and THE INTERNET SOCIETY
     AND THE INTERNET ENGINEERING TASK FORCE DISCLAIMS ALL
     WARRANTIES, EXPRESS OR IMPLIED, INCLUDING BUT NOT
     LIMITED TO ANY WARRANTY THAT THE USE OF THE INFORMATION
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