Re: [yam] Referencing 1652bis and update to RFC 5321/5322

[Ned Freed <[e-mail]>]

> > I have a more fundamental question for this WG: are people
> > still going to be interested in updating various email specs
> > if 3 muturity levels are replaced with 1 or 2?
> > (I understand that that would mean rechartering, but that is a
> > relatively minor point.)

Speaking for myself, I can no longer justify the effort if this change is made.
As it is I have very few free cycles for standards work, which is why my
contributions to this are so slow in coming. Without the invcentive of an
advancement in grade the cycles I have available would be better spent on other
standards work than this.

> Speaking for myself only, the changes called for by this group
> and the preevaluation documents so far would probably be
> time-consuming to get right (and get agreement that they are
> right) and would undoubtedly improve the quality of the
> documents, they are, in the grand scheme of things, largely
> cosmetic.

It's actually even worse than that - we are effectively enjoined by our charter
to only make cosmetic changes. IMO such changes only make the cost-benefit cut
if they provide the added benefit of moving things to stadnard.

> Specifically, little or no evidence has been offered
> that the present text is causing serious implementation or
> interpretation problems.   Even if such evidence appeared around
> a few points, the problems could be solved with short and
> focused documents clarifying those particular points rather than
> revising and reissuing the base specifications.

Bingo. And this is a bit of a cononudrum: If something in a document is causing
interop problems, it is by definition not a cosmetic issue, and exceeds the
purview of this group to address.

There is of course a gray area - stuff that's confusing to implementors but
they ultimately get right. But while such cases undoubtedly exist, we are also
guilty of consistently forgetting that the plural of anecdote is not data. Just
because someone - anyone - has a brain fart and misreads something, and then
complains about lack of clarity, doesn't mean the document is actually unclear. 

I have to say I find fewer and fewer of the suggested changes to have any merit
whatsoever. So, absent a more structured way of determining what is actually
confusing, I don't see the point in continuing.

> If the community (or the IESG because, based on experience with
> the POISSON, NEWTRK, and IPR efforts, I do not expect clear
> community consensus about anything) came to the conclusion that
> the additional quality improvements that result from moving
> documents through the review and approval process three times
> were not worth the effort, I'd almost certainly respect that
> conclusion.  In other words, without community recognition that
> examining and revising documents twice after Proposed was worth
> the trouble, I don't see any reason to believe that treating
> these documents as a special exception would be a good
> investment given other work that could be done with the same
> resources.

My reading of the tea leaves says that this time may be different. As long as
the propsosal is simple, clear, and crisp - a propertiy most of the past
efforts have not managed to have - I think there's a nonnegligable chance we're
going to be looking at a two step process in the not too distant future.

> I also note that several of the items on the preevaluation lists
> (or in queue for those lists) were changes that the IESG
> insisted upon as a condition for moving to the next level.  If
> that level were eliminated, those demands would either become
> moot (reducing the incentive for revisions) or would turn into
> obviously unjustifiable and arbitrary demands to satisfy
> personal preferences (_really_ reducing the incentive to slog
> through editing and approval of revisions).

Spot on again.

				Ned