Issues around sponsoring individual documents

[Lisa Dusseault <[e-mail]>]

The Applications area does not have a lot of attendees or WGs (I  
oversee five, and of those five, three are within a document or two  
of closing).  Much of the current work is being done as individual  
submissions (abbreviated IS in this email) [0].  I'd like to get some  
input on how IS's should be handled.  I have many opinions on IS  
tradeoffs, having written several and sponsored more, but I'm trying  
to phrase these questions without entirely presupposing my own  
answers, and to reflect conflicted opinions and the criticisms I've  
heard.

(BTW, I'm sure I can follow the advice of "Use your judgement" if  
anybody decides to say that, but it doesn't really inform that  
judgement does it?  )

Is an IS that defines a new protocol for the Standards Track fine in  
general?
Is an IS that extends a standard protocol developed in a WG fine in  
general?
Is an IS that obsoletes a standard protocol developed in a WG fine in  
general?

Do IS's suffer from less review?  Is that a problem?
Whose responsibility is it to get sufficient review?

Is it mostly well-connected individuals that can use the IS track,  
knowing an AD to do the sponsoring?  Or mostly individuals with a lot  
of time on their hands?
An IS can have a non-AD document shepherd.  Does encouraging that  
improve the situation or make IS publishing even more dependent on  
the author's connections?

Should I limit time spent sponsoring IS's? [1]  IESG work plus IS  
work could consume 30 hours a week, or 40, or 50...

Assuming I limit the potentially endless amount of work devoted to  
IS's, do I limit it algorithmically (e.g. first come first served),   
as a matter of pure taste, or other?
How should I prioritize IS sponsoring work? Which documents get my  
attention first?  [2]

When there's a question of consensus for an IS document, should I  
just drop the document?
Assuming I try to determine consensus how do I do so without an  
official owning WG -- consensus calls to the IETF discuss list?   
Choose a related list and hope people are paying attention?
Do I need to ensure there's a quorum?

How would appeals against IS documents affect answers to these  
issues? (Usually individual ADs take the first stab at handling  
appeals, formal or informal, against WG chair decisions.  When  
there's no WG chair involved with a doc, I guess the appeal would go  
straight to the whole IESG...)
Does sponsoring many IS documents give an AD, and the IESG as a  
whole, too much power?

Are we discouraging legitimate WGs by encouraging IS's?
What other purposes do WG's serve besides simply publishing  
documents, that are not met by IS's? [3]
If we turned down ISs in Apps, would the proposed work die, go  
elsewhere or ... ?  Would that be bad?

Lisa

[0] Note "Independent Submission" is a different thing, an I-D that  
goes through the RFC Editor to RFC and never gets an IETF last call,  
so it's marked as not an IETF document

[1] So far I have been sponsoring nearly every document I'm asked to,  
not really limiting.  However I can see time limiting becoming required.

[2] My current practice is to do WG-related work first, then IS- 
sponsoring work in rotation.  Note that with WG-related work, the WG  
chair does some work which I have to do with IS documents. IS  
documents are usually more work for me than WG products.

[3] I'll take a first stab at this one:
  - creating buy-in among potential implementors,
  - developing relationships that can lead to more interop work than  
otherwise,
  - choosing document editors that can reflect or build consensus,  
strongarm them if necessary