2018-07-19-rsoc-minutes
slides-interim-2022-rfcedprog-08-sessa-2018-07-19-rsoc-minutes-00

RFC SERIES OVERSIGHT COMMITTEE (RSOC)
July 19, 2018 RSOC Meeting, Montreal

Reported by: Cindy Morgan, IETF Secretariat

ATTENDEES
---------------------------------
 Sarah Banks (Chair) 
 Heather Flanagan (RSE, non-voting)
 Joel Halpern
 Bob Hinden
 Cindy Morgan (Scribe, non-voting)
 Adam Roach
 Robert Sparks (Lead) 
 Martin Thomson
 Portia Wenze-Danley 

GUESTS
---------------------------------
 Alice Russo (RPC)

REGRETS
---------------------------------
 Nevil Brownlee
 Tony Hansen 

MINUTES
---------------------------------

1. Administrivia

  The minutes of the 18 June 2018 meeting were approved.

2. Agenda bash

  No new items were added to the agenda.

3. SLA check in

  The RSOC reviewed the current SLA:

  - Tier 1: When there is a normal amount of input, the SLA is 67% of 
    documents published within the period have an RFC Editor-controlled 
    time that adds up to six weeks or fewer.
    - ‘normal’ is defined as less than 1950 Pages gone to EDIT (PGTE).

  - Tier 2: When there is a moderate burst in the amount of input, then 
    the SLA shifts to 50% of documents published within the period have 
    an RFC Editor-controlled time that adds up to 12 weeks or fewer 
    within the given quarter or the subsequent quarter (marked as Tier 
    2).
    - ‘moderate’ burst is defined as 1950 – 3072 (inclusive) Pages gone 
      to EDIT (PGTE).

  - Tier 3: When there is a large burst in the amount of input, then the 
    SLA must be discussed and renegotiated.
    - ‘large’ burst is defined as greater than 3072 Pages gone to EDIT 
      (PGTE).

  Heather Flanagan noted that a quarter is not labeled by tier until the 
  end of the quarter. 

  Joel Halpern asked what will happen with the SLA when the new format 
  is in effect and documents are no longer counted in pages. Heather 
  Flanagan replied that they will count the pages in the PDF versions. 
  Several RSOC members noted that the PDFs might paginate differently 
  from the way that the text files currently do. Joel suggested 
  revisiting the SLA once the new PDF page counts are being used.

  Robert Sparks observed that the current SLA page count numbers are 
  based on statistics that are a few years old at this point. He agreed 
  that the SLA should be looked at again once the new format is in 
  place, but added that in addition to that, the RSOC should take an 
  explicit action to redo the statistical analysis at some point.

  ACTION: The RSOC will set a clock to redo the statistical analysis for 
  the SLA.

  Martin Thomson observed that the SLA numbers are relatively low; in 
  the Web performance world, people talk about the 90th percentile. He 
  asked if the metrics could be refigured so that the SLA was looking at 
  90th percentiles as well.

4. Format update

  Heather Flanagan reported that the v3 to text converter tool is now 
  available to the RPC for testing. Henrik Levkowetz has posted a draft 
  (draft-levkowetz-xml2rfc-v3-implementation-notes) that documents the 
  issues implementing xml2rfcv3. The issues highlighted in the draft 
  have been moved into GitHub.

  Heather Flanagan reported that she does not expect to see the other 
  publication formatters until the end of the year; there were some 
  significant delays earlier this year as resources were pulled to deal 
  with GDPR.

5. GitHub experiment update

  Heather Flanagan reported that the experiment for using GitHub in 
  AUTH48 is ongoing. The experiment is documented on the RSE wiki at 
  <https://www.rfc-editor.org/rse/wiki/doku.php?
  id=github_auth48_experiment>.

  Martin Thomson observed that the RPC criteria for the experiment are 
  mostly subjective. Heather Flanagan replied that there are some things 
  they will try to turn into real measurements. 

  Adam Roach added that they can take what they learn from this and see 
  what changes need to be made to the proposal to make it work for a 
  broader experiment.

  Heather Flanagan said that she remains concerned that this will end up 
  with the RPC having two different paths for AUTH48, which she does not 
  want. Alice Russo replied that there are already two paths, in that 
  people can choose to update their own XML rather than having the 
  editors do it. Adam Roach said that he would deprecate that in favor 
  of using GitHub. Sarah Banks expressed concern that there are a number 
  of newcomers and non-native English speakers for whom GitHub may prove 
  challenging, so she would not want to see GitHub as the only option 
  for AUTH48.

6. RFC brand, streams, and statuses

  Sarah Banks asked what the RSE's next steps are on the RFC streams 
  discussion, and how that would affect her current priorities list.

  Heather Flanagan replied that the RFC Editor's top priority remains 
  the publication of RFCs. After that, the highest priority is finishing 
  the new format work. Beyond that, there are other improvements that 
  can be made that don't affect the RPC directly, such as improvements 
  to metadata and keywords. There are also conversations to be had about 
  publishing the equivalent of journal titles; Heather is looking into 
  tools to help her figure out what the options are and how to achieve 
  incremental changes. 

  Sarah Banks asked for an update on what is currently on the RSE's 
  plate and what is considered future work to be presented at the next 
  RSOC meeting. Heather Flanagan agreed that was a good idea, and asked 
  if that should be held for a half-day retreat in Bangkok. Sarah 
  replied that it would depend on what the makeup of the new RSOC is; if 
  there is not a lot of changeover, then she would prefer that this 
  happen on a conference call. Joel Halpern added that personal 
  conflicts and flight options would make it unlikely for him to be able 
  to make it to Bangkok early enough for a half-day retreat.

  Robert Sparks asked if the RSOC has opinions on formal recognition of 
  Internet-Drafts as an archival series. Heather Flanagan replied that 
  she is happy to advise, but her opinion is that as long as something 
  is an Internet-Draft that has not been submitted for publication as an 
  RFC, then it is in the purview of the IESG.

  Robert Sparks asked the RSOC to confirm that they believe that any 
  discussions about the definition of what is in the ISE's remit should 
  happen between the IAB and the ISE. Joel Halpern said that if the 
  question was about content, then yes; the RSE does not tell the 
  streams what they can publish, nor does RSOC.

  Bob Hinden said that there should not be any more private 
  conversations amongst the leadership about the confusion about what is 
  considered a standard. Joel Halpern agreed that any resolutions would 
  need to be discussed in public. Robert Sparks said someone will need 
  to develop guidelines about how to talk to the entire RFC community, 
  and asked who should figure that out. Heather Flanagan said that she 
  thinks that is her responsibility.

  Robert Sparks asked if it would be possible to get all of the various 
  parts of the RFC-using community together at one meeting. Heather 
  Flanagan replied that it would not; the various RFC-using communities 
  would not come to an IETF meeting just to discuss that topic. Bob 
  Hinden suggested that while there wouldn't be one meeting where 
  everyone showed up, there could be multiple meetings to catch the 
  various constituencies. Adam Roach observed that there will need to be 
  a point where the RSE and the IAB agree that they have done all that 
  they can do to reach out to the various constituencies.