Re: [Rfcplusplus] Sunk cost + not about us

[Brian E Carpenter <[e-mail]>]

Andrew,

On 11/07/2018 02:45, Andrew Sullivan wrote:
> Hi,
> 
> On Mon, Jul 09, 2018 at 06:32:28PM -0400, Joel M. Halpern wrote:
>> This formulation assumes that change does not have a cost.  It does.  I
>> agree that not changing has some cost.  However, absent indication that the
>> changes will actually address the claimed problem, paying the various direct
>> and indirect costs of changing things is not inherently a good thing.
> 
> I think this argument would be stronger if we understood what your
> estimation of the costs are.  The analysis underpinning the proposal
> (in the BoF request), as near as I can tell, is that the costs are the
> using up of a few letters (for new series names) plus the cost of
> possibly reserving RFC numbers for the alternative series publications
> (in case they turn out not to work after 3 or more years), plus the
> costs to tooling changes.  Are there other costs you can think of?
> 
> Keep in mind, the proposal is for an experiment.

Andrew,

It purports to be an experiment, but it's one that is hard to unwind.
My own excursion into solutionism
https://mailarchive.ietf.org/arch/msg/rfcplusplus/7GIxREzdIYAZFAHRSqCyp6S1JMo
is, if implemented experimentally, much easier to unwind because it
adds some wrapping to the archival series, and that wrapping could
later be removed. However, what I'm getting clearly from the last
24 hours' email is that since we don't yet understand the problem,
it's way too soon to seriously design an (experimental) solution.

    Brian


> Experiments do
> indeed result in some costs, and I think it is entirely reasonable to
> ask what those costs really would be.  But I also think we ought to
> keep in mind the potential benefit of the experiment, which is to do
> an empirical evaluation of whether the long-debated confusion can be
> clarified (at least, in this way).
> 
> Best regards,
> 
> A
>