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Re: "Discuss" criteria

2007-01-04 14:57:16
On 1/4/07, Brian E Carpenter <brc(_at_)zurich(_dot_)ibm(_dot_)com> wrote:

"a WG that needs a document published"

This choice of words implies that you're thinking of a WG as
an autonomous body with its own objectives.

It implies that WG members are humans with a limited amount of time,
so the goal quickly becomes "clear the DISCUSS", not "make the
Internet work better".

But that isn't the
way I look at any IETF WG. An IETF WG is a component of the IETF,
and the IETF's first goal is "to make the Internet work better"
(RFC 3935). Its way of doing this is to publish "documents that
influence the way people design, use, and manage the Internet
in such a way as to make the Internet work better" (RFC 3935 again).

So, a WG "needing" a document published has to achieve this
within the goal of making "the Internet work better." I see
most of the DISCUSS criteria quite explicitly oriented towards
meeting this goal.

A DISCUSS on an issue that the WG has considered, in the absence of
new information, does not help the Internet work better.

> Let's face
> it--DISCUSS is a fairly Orwellian euphemism.

Not if you accept that IETF WGs should operate to meet
the IETF's mission. But it does require that both the AD issuing
the DISCUSS, and the protagonists of the document, are willing
to actually discuss.

Again, in the situation above, slapping a DISCUSS on a document is not
the start of a conversation. It's a directive. I don't see anything in
the guidelines that addresses this situation. I think the guidelines
should explicitly allow or disallow it. Why don't they?

--

Robert Sayre

"I would have written a shorter letter, but I did not have the time."

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