Re: Data on internet drafts/year?

[Melinda Shore <[e-mail]>]

On 9/25/14 7:13 PM, Eric Burger wrote:
> Interesting. From 1998 on it looks like we go from 10% of ID’s
> becoming RFCs to 5%. A combination of having a typical RFC being
> published after draft-15, as well as a ton of -00’s that go nowhere,
> perhaps?

Well, we don't know what the lag time was, or how that may have
changed during that period (but we can guess!).  I found problem
statements by doing a repository search, which means that I only
counted one instance rather than having a per-revision-based count.
Even so, counting only one revision[*], the number of "problem
statement" drafts grew very quickly in the mid-aughties, a time when
the total number of submissions appears to have been relatively stable.

Anyway, the total numbers are small but to the extent that we
no longer seem to be able to undertake new work without a "problem
statement" I'd suspect that this may be contributing to process
delays.  Also, I have a broader problem with "problem statements"
in that 1) I think a charter should be relatively complete to start
with, and 2) often problem statements represent something that
someone thinks would be interesting to work on rather than a
technically mature idea that would otherwise satisfy what used
to be some of our criteria for taking on new work - basically, certainty
that the people involved can actually solve the problem being laid
out and have some concrete, workable ideas about how to do so.  I think
it's not only our slowness to complete documents that suggests that we
may be taking on some less productive aspects of other standards
bodies, but increased process ossification (problem statement->
use-cases->requirements->gap-analysis->architecture->maybe-one-day-
we'll-publish-a-protocol-eventually-perhaps) as well.

Melinda

[*] the exception to the one-revision count was when an individual
submission was resubmitted as a working group draft.

This is a count, by year, of the number of drafts which were submitted
and which contained the phrase "problem statement" in their title:

year	# of problem statement drafts
1997	2
1998	1
1999	0
2000	1
2001	5
2002	10
2003	9
2004	8
2005	15
2006	36
2007	28
2008	32
2009	23
2010	29
2011	32
2012	25
2013	34
2014	40