Time required to write down "wisdom" (Re: "Adult supervision")

[Harald Tveit Alvestrand]

--On onsdag, mai 07, 2003 08:02:49 -0700 Charlie Perkins 
<charliep at IPRG.nokia.com> wrote:

>> eventually the more important things probably should be written up as
>> policy and published as RFCs.  but again, this can take several years.
>>
> If something is so important as to have drastic effects, then the IESG
> should darned well be able to get it published sooner.  Or else the
> entire process is well and truly broken.  Maybe one of the goals of this
> group is to make timely publication possible.  It's important, or else
> the IETF as a whole starts to be a place for people pushing paper.

for a worked example of something that everything we've said here says 
"should have been published sooner", consider draft-iab-sec-cons, on how to 
write security considerations.

the history of that document, which started life as an emailed note in 
1997, is probably instructive when considering the bars to timely 
publication.

Yes, faster publication would be nice - and some intermediate level between 
"I'll write a web page" and "I'll publish an RFC and work the process until 
it has IETF consensus" might be nice too.

(It's now in the RFC Editor's queue, BTW. Sometimes things DO get finished.)

                              Harald