Standards Classification and Reality Problem Statement

[RJ Atkinson]

On Friday, Dec 13, 2002, at 17:53 America/Montreal, Fred Baker wrote:
> At 02:45 PM 12/13/2002 -0800, James Kempf wrote:
>> The issue here isn't the perception
>> that Informational documents are Standards, but rather that a WG ID 
>> will
>> inevitably become the standard, without substantial modification in 
>> any form of
>> its basic design and contents.
>
> Hmm.
>
> Is this a matter of frustration/concern? I thought that the reason we 
> met in working groups was to develop consensus documents that would 
> support interoperable implementation, which is to say "to become the 
> standard".
>
> If that's not the expectation, what in the world are we spending all 
> this time and aggravation trying to do?

Well, often the an I-D in a WG will need "substantial modification in 
form of basic
design and contents".  If one reads James Kempf's note precisely, one 
can see that
part of the concern is that in some WGs, once an I-D becomes an 
"official" I-D
of the WG, it becomes well nigh impossible for the contents of that I-D 
to be
evolved (regardless of WG consensus).  I've seen that several times, 
but maybe
I don't have a clear grasp of how often it occurs across the whole IETF.

Now I would argue that if/when such happens, this means that the WG 
Chair and ADs
haven't done their jobs, which include changing document editors if 
some document
editor doesn't actually edit the I-D to reflect WG rough consensus...

Ran