The "late surprise" problem

[Harald Tveit Alvestrand]

--On tirsdag, mars 25, 2003 00:33:41 -0500 Keith Moore <moore at cs.utk.edu> 
wrote:

>
>> rather than debating the problem, I decided to follow the time-honored
>> principle of "when in doubt, do something", and created the
>> "solutions at alvestrand.no" list.
>
> Sigh.  Even if this is not official, I fear that this will distract
> valuable energy from the problem determination effort.
>
> I can understand the occasional foray into potential solution space.  But
> why is it that we cannot take the time to gain a comprehensive
> understanding of our problem before we start investing much more energy
> on solutions?
>
> Maybe this is IETF's primary problem?

what I thought when I created it was to have a place to ground detailed 
discussion of proposals off the problem-statement list, as well as an 
archive that could be mined for ideas later on.

but I agree that problem-statement needs to be the focus of effort.

if it is not needed now, let's not use it.