At 16:09 09-04-00 , Peter Deutsch in Mountain View wrote:
Well put. As Dave has pointed out earlier this weekend, there is a burning need
for better, permanent access to the Drafts collection. If we had that, perhaps
much of this discussion might become moot, since some of the out-on-a-limb
stuff may be circulated in a less "official" form, but remain permanently and
readily accessible. I still see value in having documents come out as "Request
For Comments" in the traditional sense, but it certainly wouldn't hurt to find
ways to better distinguish between the Standards track and other documents.
The notion of resurrecting the IEN series was mooted several years
ago.
However, the community as a whole did not support that notion with any
significant
vigour. So that hasn't happened. My personal view is that there would be some
value to having the IENs alive and well, but there are issues with such an
idea. Also, some items put out as I-Ds really well and truly ought not be in
any IETF-related archival documents. While the folks in this discussion might
disagree on which drafts fall in that category, everyone believes that at least
some documents ought not be published in an IETF-related archival document
series.
That all noted, I think this conversation isn't really productive any
longer
(if it ever was). The I-D in question has been referred to an existing IETF
WG for review, which is a very normal kind of process that we're all familiar
with.
I've never seen a draft document that failed to benefit from broad review, so I
think
this has to be a good thing.
All IMHO.
Ran
rja(_at_)inet(_dot_)org