I apologize if this information is available elsewhere, but I was
wondering if the Majordomo at ietf.org is a resource available for
hosting mailing lists for discussions which aspire to be an IETF
working group?
The main problem with this is that not all mailing lists ever become
WGs. We'd be potentially opening up the floodgates to anyone who wants
a mailing list. I doubt that the secretariate has the resources for
that.
Also, some might say that if an effort can't garner sufficient
interest for someone to be willing to host a mailing list, that is an
indication of lack of support for the topic.
Finally, the IETF already has plenty of problems with some folks
(mis)using the IETF name. If we allowed pre-WG mailing lists to be
hosted from ietf.org, I'm sure some folks would point that fact out
quite loudly when asserting that they will be defining the next
standard. "See, we already have an official IETF mailing list".
Thomas