What's an experiment?

[Brian E Carpenter <[e-mail]>]

When considering some recent appeals, the IESG discovered that
we have very little guidance about the meaning of "experiments"
in relation to Experimental RFCs. RFC 2026 refers to work which
is "part of some research or development effort" and the IESG
has adopted some guidelines to discriminate between Experimental
and Informational documents (see
http://www.ietf.org/u/ietfchair/draft-iesg-info-exp-01.html ).
But beyond that, we do not know what constitutes an acceptable
experiment on the Internet.

The IESG notes that the community could establish a variety of
guidelines describing what is and is not acceptable in experiments.
Historically, the IESG has made decisions based on its perception
that there is a strong desire in the community to publish technology
that is being deployed experimentally.  We encourage community discussion
and development of more specific guidelines on operational conflicts
caused by experiments and how this should affect what we choose to
publish.  (However we recommend that such discussion
focus on the general issue rather than the specifics of any case.)

   Brian Carpenter
   for the IESG




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