Cross-Area Review (was: Fwd: RE: A follow up question on ietf@ietf.org)

[Spencer Dawkins]

Dear All,

I don't know if people have been paying attention to this thread
on the IETF discussion list or not, but it finally veered close
enough to problem-statement space for me to redirect two
paragraphs onto our list.

I'm not trying to put words in anyone's mouth, especially Tony
and John, but I've seen a number of postings that are coming
close to saying "we approved IPv6 site locals as part of a
proposed standard in RFC 1884, and again in RFC 2373, and again
in RFC 3515, without enough application community review to
shake out the issues we're shaking out now on the IETF
discussion list".

I wasn't there. I don't have any desire to second-guess some of
the smartest people I know. John already said, "indicates a
failure on the part of several generations of IESG members
(probably including me)." I was "there" for enough of the
relevant time period (1995 to 2003) to describe the IETF as a
tidal wave during those days, and I'm not saying I could have
done nearly as well, then or now.

But I am curious what the lesson might be, for those of us
thinking about the problems with IETF standards process.

(Stepping WELL back...)

Spencer

--- Tony Hain <alh-ietf at tndh.net> wrote:
> 
> John C Klensin wrote:
> > 
> > Those differences lead to discussions about religion and 
> > ideology, which get us nowhere (although they generate a lot
> of 
> > list traffic).  It is clear to me (from my particular narrow
> 
> > perspective) that our getting to this point at this time 
> > indicates a failure on the part of several generations of
> IESG 
> > members (probably including me).  It also identifies a
> series of 
> > issues in how we review things cross-area (or don't do that 
> > successfully) and reinforces my perception that shifting the
> 
> > responsibility for defining standards away from a 
> > multiple-perspective IESG and onto WGs with much narrower 
> > perspectives would be a really bad idea.
> 
> I agree, and even restricting the cross-area review to the
> IESG is a bad
> idea because there aren't enough cycles in that small group.