At 9:35 AM -0600 2/17/06, Stephen Hayes (TX/EUS) wrote:
> There is a significant problem with have a document edited
pre-approval and then not re-editing post-approval, namely the
changes that get introduced during the approval process itself. A
typical change is "add a section to the Security Considerations
talking about how Wxyz interacts with this protocol." Unless the
authors use exactly the same spelling, capitalization, reference
format, and so on, that new section will not match the rest of the
document.
Does this mean that you would permit stylistic changes as part of
the post-approval editing?
Only to match any stylistic changes that were introduced in the
pre-approval editing (or that the document authors were trying to
follow themselves). If a document has had pre-approval editing, the
post-approval editing really should only be on the diffs.
> There is also the very real issue of document authors not doing some
of the proposed edits, either intentionally or unintentionally.
If there is a problem with review suggestions not being done or
being mangled, wouldn't it be better to have a recheck done as part
of the pre-approval review?
Maybe, but maybe not. It really depends on the purpose of the edits
and how intrusive the Publisher is allowed to be in making changes.
Some authors are quite graceful about being edited, while others are
not so graceful. Giving the Publisher the ability to prevent a
document from even getting to the approval stage because the authors
don't want to implement some editorial changes may or may not be what
the IETF wants. For that matter, giving the Publisher the unilateral
right to make editorial changes in post-approval editing may or may
not be what the IETF wants.
A possible way to frame it is that pre-approval editing be considered
a polite foreshadowing of what the authors should expect in the
post-approval editing. The authors should either incorporate all of
the pre-approval editing (the norm) or do most of it and tell the
Publisher why they didn't do some of it. That input could be used in
the post-approval editing.
I have no problem with all documents passing through post-approval
editing as a safety net, but for those documents already
pre-approval reviewed, wouldn't it be better to only correct major
flaws (missing boilerplate, etc.).
If it takes only a few minutes to correct minor flaws in the text
that has changed during review, there seems like no good reason not
to do so.
Stylistic consistency is a nice goal, and reasonable people can
disagree on how much effort to put into it.
Fully agree. That's why pre-approval editing is valuable: bring up
the changes when there feels like less urgency.
I have heard a lot more complaints about IETF publication delays
than IETF publication quality.
Absolutely right.
--Paul Hoffman, Director
--VPN Consortium
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