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

[Spencer Dawkins]

Dear Harald,

My understanding of the RFC publication process was that it IS possible to
publish individual drafts as Informational RFCs, and that full IETF
consensus is not required for publication.

>From 2026 section 4.2.2:  An "Informational" specification is published for
the general information of the Internet community, and does not represent an
Internet community consensus or recommendation.  The Informational
designation is intended to provide for the timely publication of a very
broad range of responsible informational documents from many sources,
subject only to editorial considerations and to verification that there has
been adequate coordination with the standards process (see section 4.2.3)."

If a sitting AD says "this is the way it is in my area", I would think that
qualifies as "adequate coordination".

BCP status does reflect community consensus, but maybe this is overkill for
what we're discussing now.

What level of vetting is appropriate for an RFC from an applications-area AD
saying (hypothetically) "You need to think carefully about a few things,
before you use HTTP as a substrate for other application protocols"?

The alternatives I'm hearing are

- send e-mail (great idea, poor archival qualities)

- put up a web page (several areas do have area home pages - maybe this is
the obvious place?)

- write an RFC (this is where people look first anyway)

I understand why we need full consensus for standards-track documents (or at
least why we think we do - see Charlie for another view on Proposed
Standard), but we're talking about a document that says "as long as I'm an
AD, we need to do it this way". MAYBE it would be nice if co-ADs agree to
publication, but co-ADs don't have to agree with the way a shepherding AD
shepherds today.

If it takes years to publish an RFC like this, why are we surprised that
we're always in catch-up mode?

Spencer

p.s. I don't know who is playing the part of Keith Moore on this mailing
list, but the Keith Moore I know is listed as the author of RFC 3205/BCP56,
"On the use of HTTP as a Substrate", exactly the type of document that we're
saying is too laborious for sitting ADs to produce. It's an excellent
document. I am now officially confused.

----- Original Message -----
From: "Harald Tveit Alvestrand" <harald at alvestrand.no>
To: <problem-statement at alvestrand.no>
Sent: Wednesday, May 07, 2003 1:55 PM
Subject: Time required to write down "wisdom" (Re: "Adult supervision")


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