Internet Engineering Task Force (IETF) R. Housley
Request for Comments: 7760 Vigil Security
Category: Informational January 2016
ISSN: 2070-1721
Statement of Work for Extensions to the IETF Datatracker for
Author Statistics
Abstract
This is the Statement of Work (SOW) for extensions to the IETF
Datatracker to provide statistics about RFCs and Internet-Drafts and
their authors.
Status of This Memo
This document is not an Internet Standards Track specification; it is
published for informational purposes.
This document is a product of the Internet Engineering Task Force
(IETF). It represents the consensus of the IETF community. It has
received public review and has been approved for publication by the
Internet Engineering Steering Group (IESG). Not all documents
approved by the IESG are a candidate for any level of Internet
Standard; see Section 2 of RFC 5741.
Information about the current status of this document, any errata,
and how to provide feedback on it may be obtained at
http://www.rfc-editor.org/info/rfc7760.
Copyright Notice
Copyright (c) 2016 IETF Trust and the persons identified as the
document authors. All rights reserved.
This document is subject to BCP 78 and the IETF Trust's Legal
Provisions Relating to IETF Documents
(http://trustee.ietf.org/license-info) in effect on the date of
publication of this document. Please review these documents
carefully, as they describe your rights and restrictions with respect
to this document. Code Components extracted from this document must
include Simplified BSD License text as described in Section 4.e of
the Trust Legal Provisions and are provided without warranty as
described in the Simplified BSD License.
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Table of Contents
1. Introduction . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 2
2. Purpose . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 2
3. Statistics . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 3
3.1. Documents . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 3
3.2. Authors . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 4
3.3. Affiliation of Authors . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 4
3.4. Countries of Authors . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 5
3.5. Continents of Authors . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 5
4. IETF Meeting Attendees . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 6
4.1. Countries of IETF Meeting Attendees . . . . . . . . . . . 6
4.2. Continents of IETF Meeting Attendees . . . . . . . . . . . 6
5. Existing Code . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 6
6. Deployment . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 7
7. Thoughts on Future Enhancements . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 7
8. Security Considerations . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 8
9. Informative References . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 8
Author's Address . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 8
1. Introduction
A prominent member of the IETF community has developed a set of tools
to produce statistics about the authors of RFCs and Internet-Drafts.
These tools analyze the documents themselves to produce statistics
about the documents and their authors. The goal of the IETF
Datatracker enhancements described in this document is to provide
similar statistics and ensure that the software is maintained as part
of the IETF information services. While some data may still need to
be extracted from the documents themselves, as much data as possible
should be maintained in the IETF Datatracker database [DATATRACKER].
Current statistics are available on the web at
http://www.arkko.com/tools/docstats.html.
The code that is used to produce these statistics is available at
http://www.arkko.com/tools/authorstats.html.
2. Purpose
Author statistics allow the community to understand where work is
being done and by whom. The statistics make it visible which
individuals, companies, and geographic regions are the most active
contributors. The statistics also show how these are changing over
the years.
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Some of the statistics provide "nice to know" information; however,
others are sometimes used to refer to a particular participant's
contributions in the IETF or used to study trends within IETF work.
For instance, the IETF has been trying to increase the diversity of
participants, and the statistics are one way to see the impact of
those efforts. Also, the most active individuals are potential
candidates for various leadership positions.
3. Statistics
The enhancements to the IETF Datatracker shall provide statistics and
graphs about documents, document authors, author affiliation, author
country, and author continent.
The statistics should also include trends relating to IETF meeting
attendees, which the current tools do not track.
For the purposes of these requirements, "recent Internet-Drafts" and
"recent RFCs" cover documents that have been published in the last
five years.
3.1. Documents
The statistics shall provide insight into the number of authors per
document. The current web page presents the statistics and a bar
chart. The current web page can be seen at
http://www.arkko.com/tools/rfcstats/authdistr.html.
The statistics shall provide insight into the size of the documents.
The current web page presents the statistics and a bar chart. The
current web page can be seen at
http://www.arkko.com/tools/allstats/pagedistr.html. With the planned
change in document format, some other way to measure document size
might be more appropriate, such as word count.
Additionally, statistics about the document format that was used by
the authors should be provided, which is not provided by the current
tools.
The statistics shall provide insight into the use of various
specification techniques such as ABNF, ASN.1, C code, CBOR, JSON, and
XML. The current web page does not include all of these techniques.
The current web page can be seen at
http://www.arkko.com/tools/allstats/formatdistr.html.
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3.2. Authors
The statistics shall provide insight into the distribution of authors
according to the number of documents they have authored for recent
Internet-Drafts, recent RFCs, and all RFCs. The current web pages
that provide similar information include the statistics and a bar
chart. The web pages are available at
http://www.arkko.com/tools/stats/authactdistr.html,
http://www.arkko.com/tools/recrfcstats/authactdistr.html, and
http://www.arkko.com/tools/rfcstats/authactdistr.html.
The statistics shall provide insight into the relative impact of
authors by the number of their RFCs that are cited by other RFCs.
The current web page can be seen at
http://www.arkko.com/tools/rfcstats/hindextop.html.
3.3. Affiliation of Authors
The statistics shall provide insight into the affiliation of authors
for recent Internet-Drafts, recent RFCs, and all RFCs. The current
web pages that provide similar information include the statistics and
a bar chart. The web pages are available at
http://www.arkko.com/tools/allstats/companies.html,
http://www.arkko.com/tools/stats/companydistr.html,
http://www.arkko.com/tools/recrfcstats/companydistr.html, and
http://www.arkko.com/tools/rfcstats/companydistr.html.
The statistics shall provide insight into the way that affiliations
of RFC authors have changed over the years. The current web page can
be seen at http://www.arkko.com/tools/rfcstats/companydistrhist.html.
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3.4. Countries of Authors
The statistics shall provide insight into countries of authors for
recent Internet-Drafts, recent RFCs, and all RFCs. It has been
useful to provide country-based statistics, and it has also been
useful to provide statistics showing the European Union (EU) as a
single "country" for the sake of comparison with other large
countries. The current web pages that provide similar information
include the statistics and a bar chart. The web pages are available
at http://www.arkko.com/tools/rfcstats/countries.html,
http://www.arkko.com/tools/stats/d-countrydistr.html,
http://www.arkko.com/tools/stats/d-countryeudistr.html,
http://www.arkko.com/tools/stats/countrydistr.html,
http://www.arkko.com/tools/stats/countryeudistr.html,
http://www.arkko.com/tools/recrfcstats/d-countrydistr.html,
http://www.arkko.com/tools/recrfcstats/d-countryeudistr.html,
http://www.arkko.com/tools/recrfcstats/countrydistr.html,
http://www.arkko.com/tools/recrfcstats/countryeudistr.html,
http://www.arkko.com/tools/rfcstats/d-countrydistr.html,
http://www.arkko.com/tools/rfcstats/d-countryeudistr.html,
http://www.arkko.com/tools/rfcstats/countrydistr.html, and
http://www.arkko.com/tools/rfcstats/countryeudistr.html.
The statistics shall illustrate the change in number of Internet-
Draft and RFC authors per country over time. The current web page
can be seen at
http://www.arkko.com/tools/rfcstats/countrydistrhist.html.
3.5. Continents of Authors
The statistics shall provide insight into continents of authors for
recent Internet-Drafts, recent RFCs, and all RFCs. The current web
pages that provide similar information include the statistics and a
bar chart. The web pages are available at
http://www.arkko.com/tools/stats/d-contdistr.html,
http://www.arkko.com/tools/recrfcstats/d-contdistr.html, and
http://www.arkko.com/tools/rfcstats/d-contdistr.html.
The statistics shall illustrate the change in number of Internet-
Draft and RFC authors per continent over time. The current pages can
be seen at http://www.arkko.com/tools/rfcstats/d-contdistrhist.html.
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4. IETF Meeting Attendees
The enhancements to the IETF Datatracker shall provide statistics and
graphs about the country and continent of IETF meeting participants.
4.1. Countries of IETF Meeting Attendees
The statistics shall provide insight into countries represented by
attendees at each IETF meeting. Country-based statistics have been
presented in the plenary session for many years. For consistency
with the author statistics discussed in Section 3 of this document,
the statistics will include a way to show the EU as a single
"country" for the sake of comparison with other large countries. The
statistics for each meeting should be accompanied with a pie chart
that shows the eight countries with the highest number of attendees
and "other".
The statistics shall illustrate the change in number of IETF meeting
attendees per country over time. Again, for consistency with the
author statistics discussed in Section 3 of this document, the
statistics will include a way to show the EU as a single "country".
4.2. Continents of IETF Meeting Attendees
The statistics shall provide insight into continents represented by
attendees at each IETF meeting.
The statistics shall illustrate the change in number of IETF meeting
attendees per continent over time.
5. Existing Code
Since the new code will be driven by the Datatracker database to the
greatest extent possible, the existing code may be of limited value.
The existing code was intended as a temporary solution and requires a
rewrite. However, a set of heuristics used by the code may be
useful. These heuristics are provided in a separate rule database
and are used as a last resort when there is otherwise too little
information. The heuristics include author aliases, some recognized
authors and some recognized affiliations, domain name data for
determining location and affiliation, and mappings for some ways that
people represent their countries in a post address.
Authors are not consistent about the way their names appear in
various documents. For example, one document may include their given
name and another document may include a nickname. The Datatracker
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database provides a way to capture aliases, but not all of the
aliases in the documents have been added to the database.
The current Datatracker database does not have tables for heuristics
other than author aliases that are used in the current tool.
Appropriate tables to hold the additional heuristics from the current
rule database should be added to the Datatracker database in a manner
agreed by the group of people that maintain the Datatracker source
code.
A workable web interface, possibly using Django Admin, to update the
new heuristics tables shall be provided.
The current code can be found at
http://www.arkko.com/tools/authorstats.html and is openly available
but without any warranty.
The software is split in two parts, with the code itself being
separate from the heuristics database. The two main components of
the code are authorstats, which produces the statistics and generates
the statistics web pages, and getauthors, which performs document
analysis.
6. Deployment
The current tools analyze the documents themselves to produce
statistics. Some of the data needed to produce the statistics is not
currently in the Datatracker database. This development effort will
include adding the capability to capture this data in the Datatracker
database and populate it for all RFCs and Internet-Drafts posted over
the last five years. It may be cost-effective to leverage the
existing code to extract the information and then verify it one time.
The URLs for the current tools exist in many places in the Web. Once
a suitable replacement tool is available, the author of the original
tools has promised to provide a suitable form of redirection.
7. Thoughts on Future Enhancements
With the planned change in document format, some of the information
obtained through heuristics might be more directly extracted from the
XML file. Once this format is being used by a significant number of
authors, a future effort might move away from heuristics toward
extraction from the XML file. To support this approach, it would be
desirable for the new XML schema to make the author's continent of
residence available, even if it not used in the formatting of the
human-readable document.
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Currently, the Datatracker has information about document authors,
but not other contributors. If information is added to the
Datatracker in the future to cover contributors, then the statistics
can be expanded to cover contributors as well as authors.
8. Security Considerations
This document contains the SOW for enhancements to the IETF
Datatracker to provide author statistics. These enhancements do not
affect the security of the Internet. The enhancements provide
statistics about documents that are available to the public without
prior authentication, and the statistics will also be available to
the public without prior authentication.
9. Informative References
[DATATRACKER] Internet Engineering Task Force, "IETF Datatracker",
<https://datatracker.ietf.org/>.
Author's Address
Russ Housley
Vigil Security, LLC
918 Spring Knoll Drive
Herndon, VA 20170
United States
Email: housley@vigilsec.com
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