On 24-jun-2006, at 4:26, Keith Moore wrote:
IETF is already plunging toward irrelevance at terminal velocity. The only way to arrest the descent is for it to start producing better quality and more relevant specifications. A good start would be for it to actually pay some attention to the problem definition and rough specification phases and to conduct them in an environment where they can get meaningful review outside of a narrow community.
I don't think the solution is more hoops to jump through. Unless I'm mistaken, the IESG already has significant lattitude in rejecting protocols or imposing additional requirements. Building in stuff to save the day in the cases where the IESG gets it wrong is a waste of everyone's time, IMO. Lightening the IESG's load so they can reflect on the errors of their ways sooner would be more helpful in those cases.
I don't know about "narrow community", but I agree that good reviews are essential. Reviewing is hard, especially with long documents / complex specifications (unfortunately it still seems some RFC writers are paid by the word) and also when there are many dependencies. And there's essentially nothing in it for the reviewer, so only people who are very much in favor or very much against something bother, with the former probably not being in the best position to uncover hidden problems.
In my opinion, if the IETF could make it worth someone's while in one way or another to do a thorough review, that would help a lot.
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