RFC SERIES OVERSIGHT COMMITTEE (RSOC) August 19, 2019 RSOC Meeting Reported by: Cindy Morgan, IETF Secretariat ATTENDEES --------------------------------- Sarah Banks (RSOC Chair) Heather Flanagan (RSE, non-voting) Tony Hansen Cindy Morgan (Scribe, non-voting) Mark Nottingham Adam Roach Peter Saint-Andre Portia Wenze-Danley (IETF LLC Board Liaison, non-voting) REGRETS --------------------------------- Christian Huitema (IAB Lead) GUEST --------------------------------- Sandy Ginoza NEW ACTION ITEMS --------------------------------- - 2019-08-19: Sarah Banks to draft a new SLA timeline and send it out to the RSOC for review. Target date: 2019-08-20. - 2019-08-19: RSOC to review SLA timeline. Target date: 2019-08-23. - 2019-08-19: Sarah Banks and Portia Wenze-Danley to figure out who will take the SLA timeline back to the LLC. MINUTES --------------------------------- 1. Administrivia 1.1. Meeting Minutes. The following meeting minutes were approved: - 2019-07-25 RSOC meeting - 2019-08-12 RSOC meeting 1.2. Action item review In progress: - 2019-08-12: Portia Wenze-Danley to follow up with the IETF LLC regarding a two-year extension of the RPC contract. - 2019-08-12: Sarah Banks to draft a statement of work for a person to temporarily handle the tactical aspects of the RFC Series Editor role during the ongoing community discussion about the RFC Editor Model. Target date: Send to the IAB and IETF LLC by 2019-08-19. - 2019-08-12: Mark Nottingham to check with Ted Hardie and Cindy Morgan about setting up an RSOC wiki on the IAB website. 2. RPC staffing challenges Heather Flanagan noted a concern that the new format changes will cause the time needed to train new editors to increase, and asked Sandy Ginoza to outline some of the challenges the RPC currently faces in training new editors. Sandy Ginoza said that part of the challenge in training new editors is tools-related; the RPC uses a specialized set of tools that most new editors have not been previously exposed to. The RFC series uses a specialized XML vocabulary, so the XML source files for RFCs are unlike other XML files. New editors have to learn specific IETF- related terminology. Additionally, new editors have to be trained on what level of copy editing is appropriate for RFCs. Sandy Ginoza noted that the RPC is in the process of bringing on two new editors while the existing editors are in the process of learning how to use the v3 tools and vocabulary. The RPC's training materials need to be brought up to date to address v3. Adam Roach said that it sounds like there is a shorter, intense period of training up front to learn the new tools, followed by a longer period of training that has more to do with IETF culture. Sandy Ginoza agreed that that was a reasonable description of the situation. Mark Nottingham asked if the editors all worked in the same physical location or whether they were remote. Sandy Ginoza replied that about half of the RPC works out of the AMS office in Fremont, with the other half being remote. The RPC has found that it is easier to train new editors when they work in the Fremont office and can sit with existing staff. The time to train a remote editor depends on how much experience they have coming in. Heather Flanagan said that training time is something that the RSOC should keep in mind when discussing temporary headcount surges in the future and why it can be challenging to do this in the short term. Tony Hansen asked how the v3 tools have affected the RPC's workflow, and how having four output formats instead of just one would affect the state of play. Sandy Ginoza replied that it was difficult to get a clear idea of how much work v3 would add because the tools are not stable yet, but that reviewing multiple output formats will definitely be a challenge. Tony Hansen asked whether some of these challenges would persist once the transition is complete, or whether they would taper off over time. Sandy Ginoza replied that some would persist, such as having to review multiple output formats. Others may taper off; the v2-to-v3 conversion tool does a good job when the v2 input is well-formatted, but there are new features available in v3 (e.g. lists, tables) that the RPC is spending a lot of time having to clean up in documents that are converted from v2. Sandy said that she expects that to get better as authors learn the new features that are available in v3. Sarah Banks said that the RSOC should be thinking ahead about what all of this means when it comes to setting a new SLA. 3. Planning for a new SLA Heather Flanagan noted that the LLC has asked that any move to suspend the current SLA during the new format transition have a clear end date. However, because all of this is new, it is difficult to put dates around it. Heather Flanagan noted that the initial goal was to have the new format go live in August. However, the tools developer is on vacation until the end of August, so Heather asked to delay the rollout until 2019-09-15. The RSOC discussed what the timeline would be to have enough of an understanding of what the state of play would be under the new format to put a new SLA into place. Heather Flanagan noted that IETF 106, the US Thanksgiving holiday, and the AMS shutdown between Christmas and New Years Day would all affect the timeline. After discussion, the RSOC agreed to something that roughly looks like: - 2019-09-15: New format goes live - 2019-09-15 - 2019-10-31: Identify and fix critical bugs - 2019-11-01: RPC workload considered stable for new state of play - 2019-11-01 - 2020-01-21: RPC works in the new state of play and collects input on what that means for their workload - 2020-01-21: RSOC proposes updated SLA Heather Flanagan noted that the SLA also needs to consider what the community thinks is a reasonable turnaround time for the publication of documents, and suggested adding a question about that to the vendor evaluation survey. Action item: Sarah Banks to draft a new SLA timeline and send it out to the RSOC for review. Target date: 2019-08-20. Action item: RSOC to review SLA timeline. Target date: 2019-08-23. Action item: Sarah Banks and Portia Wenze-Danley to figure out who will take the SLA timeline back to the LLC. 4. Cluster 238 update Heather Flanagan reported that a good portion of Cluster 238 has been released, but there are still five documents in the cluster that have not yet been received by the RFC Editor. Adam Roach replied that draft-ietf-clue-protocol and draft-ietf-clue-signaling are both waiting for the authors to submit new revisions to address outstanding Discusses, and that a new version of draft-ietf-mmusic-rfc4566bis was recently posted that he hopes clears the outstanding Discuss. Adam was not sure about the status of the two RMCAT documents that have not been received. 5. RSE Interim Role and Statement of Work Status Sarah Banks noted that she still has an action item to draft a statement of work for a person to temporarily handle the tactical aspects of the RFC Series Editor role during the ongoing community discussion about the RFC Editor Model. She said that she plans to send this out to RSOC for review by 2019-08-19, with the hope that the RSOC can come to agreement on the text via email and send it out to the IAB and LLC for review by 2019-08-26. 6. Postal address This agenda item was not discussed due to lack of time. 7. draft-huitema-rfc-eval-project-00.txt This agenda item was not discussed due to lack of time.