RFC SERIES OVERSIGHT COMMITTEE (RSOC) March 30, 2017 RSOC Meeting, Chicago Reported by: Cindy Morgan, IETF Secretariat ATTENDEES --------------------------------- Sarah Banks (Chair) Nevil Brownlee Heather Flanagan (RSE, non-voting) Joel Halpern Tony Hansen (remote) Joe Hildebrand Bob Hinden Cindy Morgan (Scribe, non-voting) Ray Pelletier (IAOC Liaison, non-voting) Adam Roach Robert Sparks (Lead) MINUTES --------------------------------- 1. Approval of Minutes The minutes of the 13 February 2017 RSOC Meeting were approved. 2. Agenda bash An executive session on RSE time was added to the agenda. 3. RPC SLA Heather Flanagan reported that the RPC will miss the SLA for Q1 by about 2%. There was a cluster of documents (the largest ever dealt with) that included documents from multiple Areas, which slowed down processing time. Heather added that they did learn some things about how to improve the cluster and AUTH48 pages, but that this situation was an outlier and shouldn't lead to any process changes. Tony Hansen asked whether the SLA was at Level 1 or Level 2. Heather Flanagan replied that it was Level 1. There were not enough pages to get to Level 2; the cluster was challenging for reasons other than page count. Robert Sparks added that the IESG has discussed how this situation came to be and is taking steps to prevent such large clusters in the future. 4. Projects 4.1. Format Heather Flanagan reported that the Cascading Style Sheets (CSS) have been developed and that the community feedback thus far has been good. The format tools are progressing and being tracked in GitHub. There is a draft with non-ASCII characters in RFC Editor queue. The editors' tools will need to be changed in order to handle this; the author is fine with the document sitting in the queue until the tools can handle it. Heather Flanagan said that she is concerned about the precedent this might set. Robert Sparks asked how long this is expected to take. Heather replied that she was not sure; the editors will need to work with their IT department to get the right libraries on their computers. Robert noted that it may require changing applications in addition to libraries. Robert Sparks suggested that the RPC watch for opportunities to get the document with non-ASCII characters published as early as is reasonable, which hopefully will be before the whole tool chain is available for v3. Bob Hinden suggested that the RPC may need a new state, "Waiting for new format work to complete." Heather Flanagan reported that she is collecting volunteers to act as subject matter expert for non-ASCII character questions: - Francis Bond: Chinese, Japanese; can get information on Devnagari and Hangul - Patrik Fälström: Unicode - Alexey Melnikov: Russian Cyrillic - Xing Li: Chinese Bob Hinden said that he could point Heather to someone who can help with Hebrew. 4.2. Style Guide Heather Flanagan reported that she is starting the -bis process for the RFC Style Guide . The initial changes include: - incorporating information that had been added from the web portion of the style guide since the release of RFC 7322 - added advice on style for images - changes to reference format for RFCs to add stream abbreviation 5. RPC Programmer update Heather Flanagan reported that the RPC Programmer has completed the following projects: - server upgrades - conversion to MySQLi (public-facing work) - adding field to the database and various pages for easier internal tracking Projects currently in the backlog include: - pretty, stable errata URLs - updates to cluster AUTH48 pages - RFC 10K issue (scoping/timeline) - v3 errata updates The priority of those projects partially depends on discussions that will happen during IETF 98. Bob Hinden asked if the RFC 10K issue and the format issues are expected to collide. Heather Flanagan replied that she does not think so. 6. Discussion topics 6.1. Archiving and paper The RSOC briefly revisited the discussion about archiving the RFC Series on paper, but did not change their decision to stop printing paper copies. 6.2. Clarifying AUTH48 procedures Bob Hinden recapped a recent situation in 6MAN, where one of the authors submitted new XML during AUTH48 that changed the Acknowledgements section without running that by the other authors. The other authors did not notice until quite late, and the document was nearly finished before they objected. The document was left in limbo while this was going on. Eventually the AD asked the WG whether the new text should stay in or not; the WG decided that it should not. The situation raised the question whether the RFC Editor should accept new XML from an author during AUTH48. Robert Sparks asked what the difference would have been if the new text hadn't been submitted in XML. Bob Hinden replied that the authors could have been more likely to notice immediately. Robert countered that the authors are supposed to check the diffs every time the RFC Editor supplies a new version. Heather Flanagan added that this was not the only time that authors edit the XML and send it to the editors; if it is a technical change, the editors flag it as needing explicit approval, but if it is not a technical change it is generally incorporated without comment. Bob Hinden said that AUTH48 is for the authors to review what the RFC Editor has done; it is not a place for the authors to add new text. Since this was not an editorial change, the change was out of scope. Joel Halpern replied that that is up to the IESG, and whether the change affects IETF consensus. Heather Flanagan added that the IESG did discuss this earlier in the week, but there was no consensus about how to handle the issue. Heather Flanagan said that the editors will be a bit more sensitive to what they flag in the future. 7. AOB Nevil Brownlee asked if there had been any news on the DOI front. Heather Flanagan replied that there has not. 8. RSE Time (partial executive session) Robert Sparks noted that the previous expectation of the IAB was that the RSE time was increased to deal with the format work, but would come back down eventually. However, the reality has been that the amount of RSE time needed has steadily increased, and is not expected to go back down. RSOC needs to give the IAB updated guidance on what level of effort is expected by the RSE. Heather Flanagan noted that the role of the RSE has changed over the past five years. It is changing into a more executive role, with outreach and guidance to other groups. Heather said that she does not see the role getting any bigger than it is currently, but she does not see it getting smaller, either. She thinks the initial estimation of what the role is was too small. The RSOC continued this discussion in an executive session.