2019-07-22-rsoc-minutes
slides-interim-2022-rfcedprog-09-sessa-2019-07-22-rsoc-minutes-00

RFC SERIES OVERSIGHT COMMITTEE (RSOC)
July 22, 2019 RSOC Meeting

Reported by: Cindy Morgan, IETF Secretariat

ATTENDEES
---------------------------------
  Sarah Banks (Chair) 
  Heather Flanagan (RSE, non-voting)
  Tony Hansen 
  Christian Huitema (IAB Lead)
  Cindy Morgan (Scribe, non-voting)
  Mark Nottingham 
  Peter Saint-Andre
  Portia Wenze-Danley (IETF LLC Board Liaison, non-voting)

REGRETS
---------------------------------
  Adam Roach

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

1. SLA exception process

  Heather Flanagan reported that the RPC will miss the SLA for Q3 2019, 
  and will likely miss it for Q4 as well because of the new format 
  rollout and Cluster 238. She requested that an SLA exception process 
  be documented.

  Sarah Banks noted that the RPC has hired two additional heads, and is 
  in the process of hiring two more. Christian Huitema said that RSOC 
  knows at a high level why the SLA is being missed, but that he would 
  like some kind of report about how these resources are bing used and 
  how long the issues are expected to continue.

  The RSOC agreed on the following process:

  1) The RSE will notify the IETF LLC that the SLA will be missed, and 
     that an exception has been requested.

  2) The IETF LLC will request a report from the RPC to explain why the 
     SLA will be missed, and how resources are being used for things not 
     currently counted towards the SLA.

  Mark Nottingham asked if there was a sense of how much the SLA would 
  be missed by. Heather Flanagan replied that it was difficult to know 
  because there are too many exceptional things happening at the same 
  time between the new format testing/rollout and Cluster 238.

  Sarah Banks asked if it is still true that the RPC expects to miss the 
  SLA for the rest of the year. Heather Flanagan replied that they do, 
  in the same way that hitting Tier 2 of the SLA (1950 Pages Gone to 
  EDIT) means that the following quarter will also be in Tier 2 because 
  things have been pushed out. Tony Hansen asked if they would hit Tier 
  3; Heather replied that it was a possibility.

  Tony Hansen asked how clusters affect the page rate. Heather Flanagan 
  replied that they make things slower because everything needs to be 
  checked for consistency between all of the documents in the cluster. 
  Clusters also generally mean that more people are involved in the 
  AUTH48 process. The time required to edit documents in a cluster 
  increases exponentially based on the number of documents in the 
  cluster.

  One thing that has been difficult to capture in the SLA is RPC-
  controlled states; AUTH48 is not an RPC-controlled state, but the 
  editors can spend much time there following up with authors. 

  Sarah Banks noted that this would be easier if there was a limit to 
  the number of authors who were allowed to be listed on an RFC. Heather 
  Flanagan replied that a conversation about this topic is had in the 
  IESG every year or so, but they have not been able to come to an 
  agreement on this.


2. Format update

  Christian Huitema asked how confident RSOC should be about August as  
  the date for the new format rollout.

  Heather Flanagan replied that there is still disagreement about the 
  specs versus the tools for v3, and the discussion has been heated 
  enough that she cannot just bring the parties involved together to 
  sort it out. As a result, the Heather has been called upon to make a 
  decision as RSE, but she would feel more comfortable if she had input 
  from XML experts. Christian Huitema suggested a couple of names for 
  Heather to reach out to.

  Heather Flanagan reported that the RPC still thinks that they will be 
  able to roll out the new format by August, but without the -bis 
  documents. 

  Christian Huitema asked why the new format wasn't rolled out in 
  stages.

  Heather Flanagan replied that that had initially been the plan with 
  the IESG, but they later decided that they wanted it all at once. 
  Since the IESG submits the bulk of the documents the RFC Editor 
  receives, they have something of a gating function here. The IESG may 
  not be ready to approve documents in the new format, even if the RPC 
  is ready to receive them.

  Sarah Banks noted that the community should be aware that there will 
  be several months of debugging and increased workload for the RPC 
  during the implementation phase, and the SLA will likely be affected.

  Sarah Banks asked how far along the tools testing is. Heather Flanagan 
  replied that the Datatracker now accepts v3 document. All of the 
  editors are now taking v2 documents and converting them to v3 and 
  asking authors to check the output XML, and iterating based on that 
  regularly. She estimated that each editor is spending about 20% of 
  their time working on testing the tools, and that time is not counted 
  towards the SLA.

  Tony Hansen said that the SLA should be changed to take into account 
  the time that the RPC spends on things like tools testing, but that he 
  is not sure about the right way to do that. Sarah Banks agreed that 
  this is something the RSOC should look at in the short term.

  Mark Nottingham asked if there was anything that described the delta 
  between the original specs for v3 and the implementation. Heather 
  Flanagan replied that there is a summary in draft-levkowetz-xml2rfc-
  v3-implementation-notes.

  Heather Flanagan reported that Martin Thomson is providing feedback on 
  the current CSS for the HTML documents based on his experience using a 
  well-received CSS in his WGs.


3. Open RSE items

  Heather Flanagan shared her list of open tasks:

  - i18n list
  - See is the Tao of the IETF can be updated to address some of the 
    issues that arise during AUTH48
  - Thoughts on the RFC Editor and RSE function
  - Follow up with Stream Managers re: the SLA Process
  - IEEE reference examples
  - Annual report on 2018-2019 goals of the RSE
  - Update active projects in the RSE wiki
  - Vedder bis document
  - Follow up on Alissa's comments re: Why archive
  - Send out satisfaction surveys
  - Create an RSE wiki page regarding long term maintenance for RFC 
    output
  - Create an I-D regarding issues and debates on Streams and Statuses
  - Follow up on opencitations.net
  - Develop an outreach plan
  - Create a list of use cases to explore semantic versioning plus 
    categorization
  - Draft the BibTeX citations format such that we can add it to the 
    info pages
  - DOI FAQ
  - Draft a statement for all IAB, ISOC liaisons on referencing RFCs
  - Research on how to assign good keywords
  - Review rfc-editor-errata-process and decide whether to revive it and 
    make it an RFC.


4. RSOC meetings now through the end of the year

  The RSOC agreed to continue choosing the meeting date and time each 
  month via Doodle poll, rather than picking a set day and time.


5. Executive Session