Open JayDaley opened 8 months ago
This means that they are not recognised as authors in Datatracker.
This seems to motivate the issue, but the impact isn't spelled out. Why is it an issue if they aren't recognised as authors in Datatracker?
People expect to see a record of their authorship in Datatracker and are unhappy if they "lose" authorship recognition when an Editor is appointed, having had that recognition for the I-Ds that preceded. This loss of recognition is a driver for people wanting more than five authors on a document, which causes ongoing issues.
This issue seems to make some assumptions that are not strictly true.
In terms of substance, I do agree that it's not really that helpful to have a large number of people have to sign off on AUTH48, though I don't think there has to be a hard limit. I do think it would be potentially helpful to have a notion of "authors to whom correspondence should be addressed" and who are responsible for the final approval, but I don't see any reason why this has to be reflected on the front page of the document, as it's a procedural question. Similarly, the question of what's in the datatracker seems like the tail wagging the dog. If the datatracker doesn't currently accommodate the concept of who is actually responsible for AUTH48, it can be changed to do so. What matters is who appears in the author list in the document proper.
It seems like decoupling the role of Author from AUTH48 approver would require a change to RFC 7322. As noted above, I'm not opposed to that, but it's also not clear to me that this occurs often enough to make it a high priority. Do you have some data?
The 'hard limit" in the problem statement relates to ATUH48 not the rules about documents. I think that is clear in the text.
Yes there can be multiple authors with one or more labelled as editors and they all appear at the top, but this is about the specific case where an editor is appointed and those who were previously authors are no longer listed as such. That does need to be clearer in the text.
Option 2 addresses your preferred approach - all it does is decouple the AUTH48 participants from the list of authors, it says nothing about where they appear.
I agree we do not have enough data to establish a priority here.
The 'hard limit" in the problem statement relates to ATUH48 not the rules about documents. I think that is clear in the text.
No, this isn't particularly clear, especially as they are coupled in 7322. Regardless, I don't agree with your assertion that there has to be a hard limit, as opposed to IESG discretion. So, no, what I propose isn't what you propose in option (2), because I don't think we need a maximum limit, but rather the ability to decouple these if/when the IESG deems it necessary.
Problem Statement
Options