Re: Evolving Documents (nee "Living Documents") side meeting at IETF105.)

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

Hi.
I'm not going to repeat my earlier (and much longer) note, which
I think contains useful information about this issue, however...

--On Friday, 19 July, 2019 08:31 -0400 Jared Mauch
<[e-mail]> wrote:

>...
>> If we want to fast-track Rapid Operational Advice Documents*,
>> I don't believe it will be done via the RFC process.
>> 
>> *Oh look, I made you an acronym, although we have used it
>> before.

Indeed.
 
> I think one of the issues here is venue shopping.  IETF
> actually has decent tools to look at the history of a document
> and to publish a new one regularly as advice changes.

Indeed.  And that history, stability, and quality and breadth of
review are, at least in the world up to now, absolutely critical
for standards, especially standards that might find their way
into parts of procurement and regulatory processes.  Venue
shopping almost always benefits those who have ideas and want a
stamp of approval that adds credibility to those ideas.  It
hurts the credibility of standards bodies who are willing to
plan and it quite often hurts the public.

There are important roles for living documents, identification
of some of those documents as more stable (or appropriate for
trial implementation, etc.) than others, and review only by
self-selected specialist groups.  But, if careful, structured,
cross-area review (and the formal mechanisms need to support
that) are not seen as needed, I don't see what value doing the
work in the IETF provides other than an apparent endorsement
that can be presented as involving more than a working group.

> If I wanted to make draft-mauch-ops-recommendations I could do
> that today, put source in GitHub and hit version 99 before the
> end of the day.  That's either good or bad depending on your
> view of things, but if it makes sense it can go to one or more
> tracks and be available for the coming years to anyone who
> wants or needs it.

Exactly.  And if I wanted to push parts of my i18n work forward,
I could put the documents themselves in Github and identify them
as "John and friends".  But, because I'm trying to tune IETF
Standards Track documents, the only reasonable mechanism (unless
the IETF is not interested) is to work within the IETF and push
documents through through the IETF  process.  I cannot, and
should not be able to, round up a dozen interested people,
persuade the IESG to authorize a WG, and then start putting WG
work, especially work that essentially modifies, clarifies, or
supplements Standards Track documents without at least a serious
attempt at IETF review.

Back to lurking.

best,
   john