0. General - ASRG Direction (was Re: [Asrg] 3. Requirements Document)

Jonathan Morton wrote:

> > > I have to concur with this.  Even though it's reasonable to assume 
> > > most list members are technical folk, that does not imply in the 
> > > slightest that they have experience or even interest in "formal 
> > > methods".  I paid enough attention in Formal Methods lectures to pass 
> > > the exam, but I wouldn't feel at all comfortable working under such a 
> > > thing, let alone defining one.
> >
> > Well guys, as much as we may hate doing everything formally, sometimes 
> > we have to. We are definatly open to any suggestions as to how to make 
> > this process a bit easier, but I don't think we can get away from 
> > doing this :) We need some document or model to evaluate proposals, 
> > and the requirements document is one way of doing it. If you can think 
> > of other ways, please let us know.
>
> I don't think the Requirements and Technical Considerations documents 
> are excessive, in themselves.  We do have to be relatively careful to 
> avoid needlessly duplicating information between them, otherwise the 
> definitions are likely to get desynced.
> Actually, I'm not entirely sure that they aren't already duplicated (in 
> content, if not intent or audience).  I wrote my Email Authentication 
> proposal against the TCs, and that lets me see quite a lot of redundancy 
> in the Reqs.
They definatly DO duplicate each other and I have made that point to 
both authors off-list. Some syncing is needed.
> Anyway, my point is that there's a perception of bureaucracy, if you say 
> "we must do this [boring paperwork] *before* we can consider that [which 
> might be practical]".  I appreciate that is probably not your intent.  
> It might be useful to step back and clarify the overall situation for us.
I changed the subject to reflect the subject matter a little bit better. 
You are correct - this is definatly not my intent to create bureaucracy. 
As a matter of fact, RFC 2014 goes out of its way to state that the IRTF 
and its RGs should be much less bureacratic and more flexible.
The spam problem is pretty big and there are many aspects to it. The 
problem has been that everyone has a proposal on how to solve the 
problem. There are probably hundreds of those on the Internet and 
several dozens in the ASRG at least. We cannot seriously look and 
evaluate all of them without having a common baseline for evaluation. 
This boring paperwork is one approach to that.
However, aside from all of that, the ASRG is intended to coordinate spam 
research - many other aspects of it beside proposals. Ideally this 
should be a central point for anti-spam research, giving people a place 
to connect with other interested parties, allowing research and papers 
to be peer-reviewed and commented on, etc. We just don't see the 
non-proposal stuff mentioned too often.
Please let me know if you need further clarification and I welcome any 
suggestions for improving the ASRG.
Yakov




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