Re: [Int-area] intarea charter

Jari Arkko wrote:
> Marcelo,
>
>> My main concern is that since by definition, the scope is loosely 
>> defined, we may end up collecting documents that have little interest 
>> (i.e. there were not enough interest to form a WG for instance, as 
>> opposed to what i understand the goal is, to work on documents that 
>> there is interest but don't have a clear home).
>>
>> So, i think having a WG is fine, but it is very important to properly 
>> measure the interest on working on each document adopted, since we 
>> may end up having a collection of one man efforts in this context.
>
> I fully agree that the group should only work on topics that do have 
> general interest. We intend to be strict about adopting work. I also 
> believe that we've been historically strict; here are the documents 
> that I can recall we handled over the last four years: RFC 4727 (IANA 
> experimental values for IP), RFC 4843 (IPv6 KHIs), RFC 4884 (extended 
> ICMPs), RFC 5227 (IPv4 DAD), RFC 5350 (router alert IANA rules), 
> draft-atlas-icmp-unnumbered, draft-touch-intarea-tunnels, 
> draft-touch-ipv4-unique-id and I don't quite remember where RFCs 4581 
> and 4982 (bug fixes to SEND specifications) were developed, but there 
> was some discussion on our list at least.
Part of the past strictness, I think, has been that with two overworked 
ADs as the unofficial WG chairs of the unofficial WG, there was a 
natural squelching point for taking on new work.

I definitely see the possibility of feature creep here if we make the 
group official and bring on additional management bandwidth. One of the 
reasons Margaret and I started the intarea meeting to begin with is that 
we wanted more cohesiveness and understanding of what was going on 
across the intarea by everyone. I would not like to see that mission 
taken over by the new WG becoming more focused on document advancement 
than a forum to get updates on what is going on in different places.

The slippery slope here is what has already happened in other areas 
where the "Area WG" meeting is actually separate from the "Area Open 
Meeting"  - perhaps that's where we are inevitably headed.

I'm not opposed to this change, but I don't want to see the original 
mission lost in the process, or the WG becoming a home for lost work 
items of little interest to the community.

- Mark
>
> This group is definitely not the place to adopt work that, e.g., 
> failed to gain support elsewhere or is just something that one 
> individual wants to do. I will add some words to the charter to make 
> this clearer.
>
> In short, just because we intend to formalize the existence of the WG, 
> it does not follow that we will take on large numbers of drafts in the 
> program. The group has a dual nature. But it is first and foremost a 
> discussion forum for area-wide topics, not an RFC publication venue 
> for new things even if publish a document now and then.
>
> Jari
>
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