[802SEC] issues regarding sale of 802 drafts
Per Paul's request, I met with Jerry Walker today to review issues
regarding IEEE-SA sales of 802 drafts. Here is a summary of the
discussion.
*Sale of drafts is of value to IEEE-SA. Also, it supports the
openness of the process by making this documentation available to all
interested parties.
*We observed a significant number of omissions and errors in the
listing of drafts for sale. We found problems in, and inconsistencies
between, the "IEEE 802 Unapproved Drafts" page:
http://www.ili-info.com/ieee802drafts
and the Get IEEE 802 list of new standards and drafts:
http://standards.ieee.org/getieee802/new.html
On the "IEEE 802 Unapproved Drafts" page, document numbers, versions,
titles, abstracts, and keywords are incorrect and, in some cases,
garbled. At least one listing is of a draft whose PAR was withdrawn
in September. In at least one case, we can't tell which draft is
being sold because the document number and test descriptions point to
two different possible drafts. Other drafts are out of date.
*We discussed suggestions for improving the "IEEE 802 Unapproved Drafts" page:
-Add page count; this is more meaningful than the included PDF file
size in making purchase decisions; it would also be consistent with
IEEE Store practice
-Remove the "IEEE 802 Standards Status Report" link, since this
points to the IEEE-SA project database, with information that is
confusing even for standards developers and includes many obsolete
projects.
-Since the purpose of the "Recent Downloads" button in unclear, its
prominence on the page is questionable.
*We discussed suggestions for improving the upload and posting of drafts
-Noting that even drafts that entered Sponsor Ballot weeks ago are
not for sale, we agreed with discussion at previous 802 EC meetings
that all drafts submitted for Sponsor Ballot ought to be immediately
submitted for sale without the involvement of the WG.
-An upload facility similar to the IEEE-SA Balloting Center Uploads
page <http://standards.ieee.org/eprocess/upload_balloting_file>
should be made available for a WG to easily upload WG drafts (prior
to Sponsor Ballot) in a consistent process. It seems as if the
Balloting Center Uploads page could be used as is, with the comment
field used to indicate that the draft is for sale, not for ballot.
-When new drafts enter the catalog, an acknowledgement of
availability should be posted to the WG contact, with a link to the
product listing for review and an email address to send any
corrections.
-It's not clear how best to remind WGs to upload new drafts. Jerry
suggested monthly reminders. Roger was not enthusiastic. Roger
believes that, if the process is easy to use and fully acknowledged,
WGs will learn to use them regularly.
-Jerry wants to ensure that uploaded drafts are unsecured. IEEE staff
need to edit something in the PDF (presumably the description fields
and security options).
-Once a draft is approved by the SASB, it should quickly be relabeled
as an Approved Draft instead of an Unapproved Draft. This should be
handled entirely by staff. It's not clear to Roger why the ILI
catalog should be limited to Unapproved; this requires an extra level
of management to move drafts to IEEE Store once approved.
*Suggestions for improving the value of IEEE Standards Online subscriptiom
-Rather than remove obsolete drafts, it might be better to retain
them to maintain an archive; this might encourage some people to
subscribe.
Roger
>At 17:24 -0500 03/11/11, Paul Nikolich wrote:
> >Roger,
> >
> >You are not at the 802 task force meeting, but I have assigned you
> >an action item:
> >- please work with Jerry Walker to develop a process that ensures
>drafts are >made available for sale in a timely manner.
> >
> >Please confirm you can implement this action item with Jerry and me.
> >
> >Thanks,
> >
> >--Paul