Re: Last Call: <draft-housley-two-maturity-levels-06.txt> (Reducing the Standards Track to Two Maturity Levels) to BCP

[Dave Cridland <[e-mail]>]

On Fri May  6 11:44:48 2011, John Leslie wrote:
> Dave Cridland <[e-mail]> wrote:
> >
> > To quote from draft-bradner-ietf-stds-trk-00 (paraphrasing  
> newtrk).
> >
> >   4/ there seems to be a reinforcing feedback loop involved:  
> vendors
> >      implement and deploy PS documents so the IESG tries to make  
> the
> >      PS documents better
> >
> > This is the core issue, which far from addressing, the proposal  
> tries
> > to discard the feedback loop, stick its fingers in its ears, and  
> sing
> > la-la-la-I'm-not-listening.
> 
>    Please excuse the hyperbole -- Dave's just trying to get our  
> attention.
> 
> 
I concede that the draft neither has fingers nor sings; the point  
remains valid however.


> > The fact remains that vendors treat PS maturity RFCs as  
> "standards".
> > By reverting to the letter of RFC 2026, this will undoubtedly
> > increase confusion - indeed, it's apparent that much of the  
> deviation
> > from RFC 2026 has been related to this very confusion.
> 
>    Nothing we put in a rfc2026-bis will change this. Nothing we put  
> in
> a rfc2026-bis _CAN_ change this.
> 
> 
I'm in total agreement with this, which is why I'm so against a  
proposal which exacerbates the issue.


>    If we want to change this, we need to start putting  
> warning-labels
> in the _individual_ RFCs that don't meet a "ready for widespread
> deployment" criterion.

I do not believe this will work, actually.

In general, I think boilerplate warning messages get ignored - people  
quickly learn to expect and ignore them as routine - and I don't  
think we're likely to be able to construct unique and varying warning  
messages for every RFC we publish.

Dave.
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