Dave,
It is pretty much never a good idea to have the mechanics of a process
contain artificial constraints, as a means of implementing higher-level
policies.
If a working group is worried about documents getting read, they will
impose their own deadlines or they will constrain their agenda. Having
the Secretariat use an IETF-wide deadline for this purpose is
Procrustean, to say the least.
This sort of constraint is a safe guard against run away working group
chairs attempting to ram through changes by silencing people who have
not read the latest draft that came out while people were traveling to
the event.
In practive all this does is force groups to distribute drafts via other means.
I've seen plenty of cases where the version of a draft discussed at a meeting
isn't available as an I-D yet.
In other words, the constraint doesn't appear to be an effective safeguard
in practice. Dave has it right: This is simply a Procrustian annoyance.
Ned
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