Re: When to adopt a draft as a WG doc (was RE: "IETF work is done on the mailing lists")

[Melinda Shore <[e-mail]>]

On 11/29/12 10:06 AM, Barry Leiba wrote:
> I believe that one is the case, though others can weigh in with
> opinions as well.  Yes, we could change our documentation to
> explicitly say that this particular decision is a management choice.
> But I'll caution you against trying to do that in general: we have a
> million things that are unspecified and should be unspecified and left
> to management choice.  Trying to find all of those and explicitly say
> so will be a frustrating exercise, and one that won't have a lot of
> value in the end.  In general, we specify what we want to specify, and
> what's left is up to judgment and management.

Hear, hear (and I feel pretty strongly about this).  There are
correction mechanisms if someone feels that a process has gone
off the rails and I prefer to rely on those than trying to
micromanage IETF process.  Right now it seems to be the case
that keeping much unspecified and having strong chairs is a better
use of limited resources than trying to shove everything into a
box.  I'll note that it seems possible that overspecifying process
could potentially cause more protests rather than fewer.

Melinda