When is an idea a good idea?

Disclaimer - I'm one of the ADs who will be balloting your documents 
until at least March 2015, but I'm only one of 15 ADs, and haven't 
talked about this with the rest of the IESG.
The past week has brought me yet another example of an idea that could 
be a good idea, but not under every possible set of conditions, being 
evaluated as if we had to decide whether it was a good idea in all 
cases, or a bad idea. This might sound familiar to you, but if it does, 
let's not talk about that specific case.
The longer (and more painfully) we talk during Last Call, the more 
details we unearth that help me to understand what document 
authors/working groups are thinking, and that's good, but if it was less 
painful, that would be even better.
http://tools.ietf.org/html/rfc2026#section-3.2 describes Applicability 
Statements, as distinct from Technical Specifications, and says (among 
other things):
   An Applicability Statement specifies how, and under what
   circumstances, one or more TSs may be applied to support a particular
   Internet capability.

...

   An AS may describe particular methods of using a TS in a restricted
   "domain of applicability", such as Internet routers, terminal
   servers, Internet systems that interface to Ethernets, or datagram-
   based database servers.


Speaking only for myself, I don't expect Proposed Standards to be 
perfect, and to work perfectly in every situation, but if a 
specification doesn't describe any limits on applicability, I'm going to 
be evaluating it as if it will be used on the open Internet (that's what 
the "I" in "IETF" stands for).
If a draft says it's only intended to be used within an IP subnet, I'd 
evaluate it differently. I might ask that the authors/working group 
consider what the TTL should be set to, so that what starts out within 
an IP subnet stays within an IP subnet, but (to use one actual example) 
we wouldn't be arguing about whether it's OK to send 32K max-length 
packets over an arbitrary Internet path at line rate without getting any 
feedback about path capacity - there are probably paths where that would 
work, and there are definitely paths where it would not.
If a draft says it's only intended to be used on provisioned, managed 
internetwork links subject to SLA monitoring, I'd evaluate it differently.
If a draft says "this is a hack, intended for use on old hardware that 
can't do $X", I'd evaluate it differently.
There are other limited-use scenarios that would make me evaluate a 
draft differently.
None of this is a guaranteed pass, but it would help me a lot. It would 
likely help other reviewers, too.
So, if you don't intend for your draft to be used on the global 
Internet, please say so! As per 
http://tools.ietf.org/html/rfc2026#section-3.3, it's not necessary to 
put an Applicability Statement in a different draft; just a section that 
says (another actual example) "this has been tested using these 
parameters on a lightly-loaded LAN, and it works there", that is more 
helpful than a tug of war(*) about whether something is a good idea or a 
bad idea in all situations, in front of a live studio audience.
Thanks to Alia Atlas for nudging me to think about this more.

Spencer

p.s. If you have feedback about what I'm thinking, I'd love for you to 
share it, whether on this list, privately to me, to the 2015 Nomcom, or 
to other Nomcom-eligible IETF participants when you're asking them to to 
sign the recall petition ;-)
(*) http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tug_of_war