>there's nothing wrong with looking at aggregate data about working groups' >production of RFCs. of course, one should be careful about conclusions. And the authors do caution that their numbers are blind to the quality of the RFCs. Their point, though, is that looking at the easy metrics is better than not measuring anything at all; it gives a first-order approximation. If someone then figures out how to refine that approximation, then great. The authors don't seem to make any substantive conclusions based on this approximation. Instead, they looked at what they learned in the process of gathering the data, and suggest improvements to WG charters to make it possible to gather better data in the future (making the charter machine-readable, and having it include a log of the events in the WG's lifetime). Seems harmless to me. (Possibly too much work--I can't speak to that--but harmless. :-) /==========================================================\ |John Stracke |Principal Engineer | |jstracke@incentivesystems.com |Incentive Systems, Inc. | |http://www.incentivesystems.com |My opinions are my own. | |==========================================================| |Some days, it just doesn't pay to gnaw through the straps.| \==========================================================/