o If one is revisiting the old ideas, they will most likely prefer
mailing list archives (due to its descriptive nature) than RFC.
Ummm, no. Most IETF mailing lists are pretty inaccessible to non-WG
participants because no one ever summarizes ideas before WG last call.
...
(note the recent discussion on end-to-end as the TCP
research community realized that they weren't sure what was, and was
not, TCP).
...
Mailing list archives are an order of magnitude more difficult than
that (for the reasons previously stated).
so, RFCs too share the same problem (as per your reference to TCP
related RFC issue.) we should be specific about what can be made
into RFC; it should not also share the long process time associated
with informational RFCs (e.g., area report series after every IETF
meeting which summarize BOF results.)