OPEN ISSUE: Standards Track

[Melinda Shore]

The question was this:

>There is also a more fundamental issue with the IETF's engineering
>practices.  Although our current standards track contains three
>levels of maturity (Proposed Standard, Draft Standard and Full
>Standard), we do not have sufficient differentiation regarding the
>quality and completeness of documents required at each stage.  The
>bar is set very high for publication at Proposed Standard, and very
>few documents advance beyond this stage. [OPEN ISSUE: Do we have
>IETF consensus that this is a problem?]

There appears to be clear consensus that we have a problem
with standards maturity levels.  However there isn't
consensus beyond that about the extent to which internet
draft categories (wg draft, etc.) are a part of that
problem, and the possibility was raised that there may be
some sloppiness in how we (the IETF) move documents along as
protocols mature.  Some of the discussion was implentation-y
and nature and therefore out of scope.  If people feel that
something needs to be said beyond what Margaret included in
the draft, please speak up.

Melinda