[Accountability-tf] Updated Draft Document - Feedback by 13 December

Dear all,

On Wed, Dec 12, 2018 at 06:18:27PM +0100, Antony Gollan wrote:

> Aside from a couple of tiny fixes here and there, a new section has been
> added that begins on page 16, called "Putting RIPE Documents into Context."
> This is in response to feedback on RIPE List after we published our draft.

without endorsing this too tight deadline, I've read this version. No
issue with the minor changes.
On "Putting RIPE Documents into Context", I think this section has become
a bit too long and confusing by trying to catch too many details.
This is also not all about newcomers, so that reference I'd consider obsolete.

I would claim that "There is generally a shared understanding of what RIPE
Documents are and how they function within the RIPE community" is a bit
too optimistic.  This might be true for policy documents, but the issue
is that there's no clear understanding who can approve documents ("streams"
in RFC Editor parlance) and what weight or impact they have (similar to RFC status).

	"We therefore feel able to provide a general overview. However, as with the
	earlier section on consensus - nothing in this description should be read
	as creating new rules or requirements that the community must adhere to."

My feelings are different. Also, "new" rules aren't the issue - this captioning
is at best descriptive, not normative - in the sense that it should not
claim to formally describe the current practice.

The open questions are: What "streams' do exist: we know "RIPE Policy" and "RIPE NCC
Document" (and there might be hybrids, thinking of the RIPE DB), but obviously
a lot of documents don't fall into these two categories.
I'd also differentiate between 'endorsing a policy' and 'publishing a document',
especially given that at east plenary 'endorsements' are genereally a ceremonial
act of little value.
We've found (in our conversation with Daniel) that the houskeeping on document
status, especially regarding the earlier documents, could be improved.
In general, the question of updating, superseding or obsoleting documents or
sets of documents has been unclear. I think the recommendation should
be stronger by reducing the "consider" indirection.

regards,
   Peter