A ceiling on the number of working groups

[Jari Arkko]

John C Klensin wrote:

> As a preview for those of you who want one, or who don't want to
> slog through the details of a long draft (I assembled the text,
> not Mike :-( ) our conclusion is that a ceiling on the number of
> WGs in an area would provide most of the advantages of the PACT
> suggestions, while putting more responsibility on the IESG to
> get serious and lead and manage.  We are proposing a 25%
> reduction in the number of WGs in the IETF, applied on an area
> by area basis.  

The IETF and the Internet would be a much better place if there
weren't for the damn users. And their requirements! And those
new applications. We did fine with just ftp and telnet on our
time. Let's give them the Internet busy signal, no more users
needed and no more applications allowed. After all, if the choice
is between better management structures, better architecture,
and more people at IETF versus not giving the humankind what it
wants -- clearly its easier for the humankind to adapt than for
the IETF to deliver more.

#sarcasm mode off

Seriously though, I do agree that in some cases WGs got
chartered that they should not have. However, I see this
more as a technical mistake rather than a volume issue.
If there's demand for Foo then there has to be sufficient
number of serious contributors, expected large-scale usage,
and Foo will happen if our structure can scale to contain it.
And I don't see any fundamental reason why we couldn't scale
if we wanted to.

So, please, let's talk about qualitative controls that we
could e.g. enforce on WG creation. Require document editors
and reviewers beforehand. Check market estimates for the
user space of the technology. Require earlier implementations.
But let's not focus so much on quantitative, artificial
limits.

Jari