Re: A mailing list protocol

[John C Klensin <[e-mail]>]

--On Sunday, December 09, 2012 11:40 -0900 Melinda Shore
<[e-mail]> wrote:

> On 12/9/12 10:43 AM, S Moonesamy wrote:
>> I would like to ask you to pick the three points from Section
>> 2 (
>> http://tools.ietf.org/html/draft-moonesamy-mail-list-protocol
>> -00 ) which you consider as helpful to facilitate mailing
>> list discussion and send them to me off-list.  I'll post a
>> summary to this mailing list after a week.
> 
> I'm increasingly not a fan of process documents.  It may be
> the case that we need a process document addressing the
> problem of excessive process documents.  I hope that where
> your efforts end up is a wiki page or some such, which I think
> would be helpful, rather than an RFC, which I think would not.

+1 and an observation:  

I think there is a simple test as to when a process document is
actually necessary.  If the nature of the relevant process is
such that one wants a violation to constitute an appeal-able or
recall-able event and believes that the problem created by a
violation is serious appeal or recall should probably succeed,
then getting formal consensus and generating a BCP RFC is
probably justified.  For anything that constitutes general
guidance (as in this case) or is a statement about how some
entity intends to do things until their change their minds
again, "wiki page or some such" should be perfectly adequate and
less likely to waste community time on splitting hairs, picking
nits, and other not-very-productive activities.

Note that the above is consistent with the recent decision(s)
about the Tao: informative document, general guidance, but not
something that contains rule whose violation can be appealed,
hence a web page and some guidance about how it will be
maintained, not a series of RFCs.

    john