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 . 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.