Document the process for requesting cross-org review

[martinthomson]

We have had a number of successful reviews of documents in the IETF by W3C groups now. But the process is always a little bit of a surprise.

We should:

1. Document how people can request review. I think that this issue tracker might be a simple enough way to make that request, but we'd need to formalize that in some sort of artifact. (We can probably put that artifact in this repository, but we should link it from the IETF datatracker at least.)
2. Provide guidance to those who do the reviews about how to explain what it is that they are doing and why. In both IETF and W3C, there is an expectation that where review comes from doesn't matter that much, but our experience with these reviews is that unsolicited feedback can still be a little bit of a surprise. Proper framing will ensure that the recipient of the review (especially if they weren't the ones to request it) are not surprised.

[plehegar]

Does the IETF have a document that indicates how an RFC can be reviewed within the IETF ?

In terms of framing, we could advise our Groups to send along the explainer that they produced for the TAG.

[martinthomson]

There is this: https://www.ietf.org/process/directorates/

That is pretty light on detail though. https://datatracker.ietf.org/group/genart/about/ contains a bit more detail about one of the busier directorates.

we could advise our Groups to send along the explainer that they produced for the TAG

If we are asking for review, then that is how I would do that. But I would probably also request a cover letter. The boundaries of what a review entails is sometimes far less clear for W3C work than it is in the IETF. IETF document reviews almost always entail reviewing a single artifact, whereas doing review for W3C often involves chasing down a bunch of links from an explainer. Explainers might refer to a spec, or part of a spec, or a pull request on a spec. Asking for a brief description of what needs to be reviewed is probably necessary.

[simoneonofri]

Hi Martin,

It makes sense to me, too. And use it to track GitHub information on one side (e.g., design-request repositories) and understand what is useful on the IETF side.

In terms of the request from W3C to IETF, this usually happens during the Wide Review when an IETF group/directorate is indicated in the charter (e.g., in the case of Web Sustainability, the eimpact ; for WebAuthn SecDir).

At the moment, an email has been sent to the Chairs using one of the W3C's email archives. The email says that for any comments, please refer to the WG repository.