Re: [yam] Pre-evaluation documents

[Barry Leiba <[e-mail]>]

> Catching up a bit:

Yes, me too; sorry, but I've been away.

> - I think Last Calling these things is silly, though probably harmless.
> These are evaluations of whether items are on our charter, only in a more
> extensive way than most items hit a charter. This is an IESG decision, not a
> community decision. If the IESG needs community input into these decisions,
> that's fine, but I would think the IESG has the expertise to make these
> decisions for themselves.

I think it's more than silly: it's harmful.  Repeating what others
have said, but more succinctly: it is VERY EXPENSIVE to ask the
community to review and give last-call comments to the pre-eval
documents, VERY EXPENSIVE to ask the RFC Editor to put them through
the process, VERY EXPENSIVE to publish them as RFCs and have
<strike>Alfred</strike> many folks pay attention to them as fully
fledged documents.

It strikes me that some people are underestimating the cost, probably
by mistakenly thinking that the time that goes into all this is free.
We know that the time spent by the IESG and the document authors is
not free.  Let's not forget that the community review time and the
other community attention are not free either.

For reasons already stated, the decision process can be recorded, the
documentation of the process and the decision can be archived, and the
IESG can get whatever advice it needs to supplement its own collective
expertise without going through the VERY EXPENSIVE process of making
these things RFCs.

Let's PLEASE save the RFCs for the actual documents, and NOT for the pre-evals.

Barry