Complex Problems (Was: Re: Discipline of Internet Protocol Engineering)

[Margaret Wasserman]

Hi Dave,

At 03:47 PM 6/5/2003 -0700, Dave Crocker wrote:
>The IETF has a very poor track record with fuzzy goals,
>and a very good one with very concrete, very near-term and very narrow
>goals.

You say this repeatedly, and I agree with it, but we seem
to reach different conclusions based on this fact...

Your reasoning seems to run:  The IETF is bad at resolving
complex issues, so we should only work on small, well-defined
problems.

My reasons runs:  The IETF is bad at resolving complex
problems, so we need to find a way to get better at it.

Some problems just _are_ complex...  Claiming that we
should only form WGs with narrow charters begs the
question:  How do we organize ourselves to solve the
complex problems?

Margaret