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IESG Statement on Document Shepherds
statement-iesg-iesg-statement-on-document-shepherds-20101011-00

Document Type IESG Statement
Title IESG Statement on Document Shepherds
Published 2010-10-11
Metadata last updated 2024-02-23
State Active
Send notices to (None)
statement-iesg-iesg-statement-on-document-shepherds-20101011-00

IESG Statement on Document Shepherds

11 Oct 2010

This statement provides guidance from the IESG on selection of a Document Shepherd for documents from IETF working groups and documents from individuals.

RFC 4858 defines the role of the Document Shepherd for documents from IETF working groups, and it also says:

The Document Shepherd is usually a chair of the working group that has produced the document. In consultation with the Responsible Area Director, the chairs may instead decide to appoint the working group secretary as the responsible Document Shepherd.

Experience has shown that a successful Document Shepherd need not be the working group chair or secretary. In fact, the IESG encourages the working group chair to select an active working group participant that has strong understanding of the document content, is familiar with the document history, and is familiar with the IETF standards process. The Document Shepherd of a working group document should not be an author or editor of the document.

Not all individual submissions have a Document Shepherd other than an author or editor of the document. When there is one, the Document Shepherd is selected by the Responsible Area Director in consultation with the document authors or editors.

The Document Shepherd prepares a publication request write-up. The template for the write-up can be found here:

For working group documents:

http://www.ietf.org/iesg/template/doc-writeup.html

For individual documents:

http://www.ietf.org/iesg/template/individual-doc-writeup.html

Bibliography

Document Shepherding from Working Group Last Call to Publication

This document describes methodologies that have been designed to improve and facilitate IETF document flow processing. It specifies a set of procedures under which a working group chair or secretary serves as the primary Document Shepherd for a document that has been submitted to the IESG for publ…