While steering may be an AD's most important job, reviewing drafts comes a close second - but nobody has time to review everything.
Attend to review before a document become a working group document - ADs formally take part in this process if the document extends the charter or if they have to approve a milestone. This is an important phase, so ADs should give attention, while keeping to that balance of "not doing the WG's work" described above.
Attend to review during work so that there is not late surprise, trying to facilitate external "early reviews". Some ADs arrange for a formal early review session at a stable midpoint time. ADs fairly often arrange early security guidance by members of the Security directorate who have been identified as knowledgeable about their Area.
We're also experimenting with a voluntary but more formalized EarlyExternalReview process which coordinates volunteer reviewers from review teams across several areas.
Obtain specialized pre-IESG reviews as needed, e.g., MIB Doctor, Media Types, URN, and URI. While this often applies in the context of working groups, note that Media Type, URI and URN registration requests may come to an AD or a WG chair which do not need to have WG processing, or in the case of Media Types, don't even need to be IETF documents. Check out details: MibDoctor, MediaTypes, UrnUri. Early reviews can be coordinated through the dedicated mailing list.
Review the document when publication is requested - when a WG has completed work, the WG chair requests publication by a message to the AD with a cc to iesg-secretary, usually including a PROTO writeup which gives some context for the AD's review. Typically, the AD sets the state to AD Evaluation and gives his or her review of the document, ideally sending this to the working group list, and if the ongoing review and the WG chair's stewardship is effective, not requiring long resolution.
The AD Evaluation review should mark a final cutoff point for looking for nits, likely using the nit checker. The WG chair shepherd states in the writeup that all have been checked, but the IESG still finds itself looking at issues from the list, which is inefficient.
Note that the RFC Editor will apply the Style Guide documented in RFC 7322 and maintained on the RFC Editor's Style Guide page. I-Ds are expected to conform to this guide before being passed to the RFC Editor.
One aspect of the Style Guide that needs attention is the number of authors on the front page. Read more about this at FrontPageAuthors.
The primary issues in review are typically quality and intra-area and cross-area concerns, perhaps last considerations of complexity, if the working group has any latitude on optional features.
Some other issues that are common in AD Evaluation are clearer setting of context and purpose, improved IANA considerations, since WGs often need advice on IANA policy and clarity, improved congestion avoidance, improved internationalization, improved security considerations, updated references, and elimination/migration of unnecessary normative references to incomplete work. It is important to remember "not doing the WG's work". The Discuss criteria can be adapted, as well as a sense of how long to take for this review (ExceptionTimesTable) and what the next states are (TrackerStatesTable).
The content of this page was last updated on 2018-04-01. It was migrated from the old Trac wiki on 2023-02-17.