Updated: Friday, Oct 3, 2008
Q: What is the SIPPING WG Review Team?
A: They provide detailed reviews of WG documents to ensure that they have been sufficiently reviewed by experts within the WG prior to being forwarded to the AD/IESG to be considered for publication.
Q: Who is on the SIPPING WG Review Team?
A: The current membership list is maintained at SIPPING Review Team
Q: How can I join the SIPPING WG review team?
A: Interested volunteers should contact the WG chairs.
Q: How was my document reviewer(s) selected?
A: There is a mechanism that involves both leveling the review workload and attempting to select reviewers based on topic areas. The same reviewer will be assigned for all subsequent reviews of a single specification while it remains within the WG. One of the objectives of this approach is to build additional SMEs for a particular document that could possibly serve as editors should the need arise.
Q: Are the reviews public or private?
A: The reviews are sent to the SIPPING WG mailing list. Ordinarily, copies are sent to working group chairs, and authors/editors, but the archives are publicly viewable at: Reviews A link to the reviews is also maintained in the spreadsheets, which contain complete information as to the document status, timelines, document editor, PROTO chair, reviewers and links to reviews. The information is sorted in several ways depending upon the information desired:
Documents currently under review (useful for WG members to know what they should be reviewing)
Documents sorted by when the next Revision is due (most useful for document editors to know when their next revision is expected)
Q: What do the various fields in the "Review Due" column mean (i.e., why aren't there dates in all those fields)?
A: The entries which contain a date field indicate documents that WG members should be actively reviewing, either because the document is undergoing WGLC (per the "Status" column) or the document has been recently updated and the document authors would like WG feedback. Thus, the token for these documents belongs to the WG members and the documents in this state won't progress unless there is feedback from the WG.
For entries which contain a value of "Awaiting Update", the document has received some WG feedback and an update from the authors is expected. Thus, the token for these documents belongs to the document editor/authors. Documents in this state won't progress until an updated document is made available to the WG.
For entries which contain a value of "Completed", the "Status" column reflects who has the token. For a "status" of Post-WGLC documents, the token is with the PROTO chair to review the document and determine its readiness for forwarding to the AD. Documents in this state won't progress until the chair has done their final review. Obviously, documents with a "Status" of AD or IESG, have already been forwarded for publication. Note, also that once the documents are in this state, the "Status" field includes a link to the PROTO write-up for that document.
The remaining entries ("Re-review" and "Review Completed") are historical and contain links to past reviews (clicking on the Chair and Reviewer names takes you to the previous document reviews). One important note is that the link associated with the document for these entries takes you to the previous version in the tools page rather than the current version in the ID tracker.
Q: How are the document milestones selected?
A: Several factors influence the document milestones, including spreading out the work so that there are no more than 2 documents undergoing WGLC at the same time, with no more than 2 documents (or sets of documents) being forwarded to the AD/IESG during a single month. The typical rule of thumb is that the expectation is for documents to be updated at the most 6 weeks after the reviews are due. This allows for late reviews and any additional mailing list discussion on the reviews. Then, the date for progressing to the AD/IESG is typically 6 weeks after that date (thus at least 3 months after the WGLC deadline), again allowing time for any document changes to be made.
Based on recent WG discussions, if a document misses its deadline, it will be put in the next available slot, often after other documents that might be ready in time for their deadlines (per the need identified above to spread out the work AND to not impact all WG milestones when a single document or set of documents is delayed for whatever reason).
Q: Are the SIPPING WG Review comments binding ?
A: The document editor needs to consider these comments as general WG feedback and provide conscientious responses to each issue raised. Any changes to WG documents, as usual, must be based on WG consensus. Thus, these comments are treated like any other WG mailing list feedback on a document.
Q: How are the SIPPING WG Review comments used?
A: As mentioned previously, the comments are cached and linked in the spreadsheets to facilitate document updates by the author and to provide the history to facilitate the chair's PROTO write-up. Given the volume of email on the SIPPING WG mailing list this is extremely useful.
Q: Is there any written SIPPING WG procedure?
A: At this point, the only official procedure is documented in this FAQ and the Guidelines.