There is technical work other than late-stage document reviews. We
might get a larger return on investment if community members who are
temporarily serving in the area director role were to spend more of
their combined technical and management talent on making sure that our
working groups are solving the right engineering problems for the
long-term health of Internet. If that leads to fewer working groups
producing higher-quality output, so be it.
It's perfectly appropriate to be upset. I thought of it in a slightly
different way -- like a space that we were exploring and, in the early
days, we figured out this consistent path through the space: IP, TCP,
and so on. What's been happening over the last few years is that the
IETF is filling the rest of the space with every alternative approach,
not necessarily any better. Every possible alternative is now being
written down. And it's not useful. -- Jon Postel