John,
Harald, while I agree in principle, I would suggest that some of
the comments Eric, Bill, and others have pointed out call for
the beginnings of an evaluation of your experiment. I further
suggest that evaluation is appropriate at almost any time, once
data start to come in.
First a reminder of what the procedure for this experiment is, before we talk about modifying it:
1. Start with the list of RFCs prior to RFC 2001 and marked PS.
2. Remove all RFCs known to still be relevant where new implmenetations
might be necessary. Be liberal in what we accept for removal
purposes.
3. Take the list to the IETF and other relevant mailing lists so that
as wide an audience as possible can have a say.
4. Present the list to the IETF and the NEWTRK WG in Minneapolis.
5. Here things depend on the state of the Johns draft. If it's
ready and takes into account cruft, then we follow that
procedure. Otherwise, extended WG last call, extended IETF last call,
IESG consideration, and then take one of the following two
steps:6. Either reclassify documents as Historic and write up BCP.
or
Don't and write up failed experiment.This follows the WG milestones:
Dec 04 If the consensus was to create a new RFC cleanup process then initiate a trial of the cleanup process based on the description in teh Internet Draft Mar 05 Determine if there is WG consensus tha the trial of the RFC cleanup process was successful enough to proceed to finalize the process. Jul 05 If there was WG consensus that the trial of the RFC cleanup process was successful submit an ID describing the process to IESG for publication as a BCP RFC
Now to your points:
1. Nobody in the IETF *has* to participate in this experiment. The fewer who do, the more likely we'll end up with a substandard list, and the less likely the IESG will buy the list. We don't seem to be having this problem at the moment.
2. Changing the procedure should only be necessary if we can identify specific flaws in the procedure. The objections I hear right this very moment fall into two categories:
[a] "There's obviously a lot of trash out there so can't you just focus
on that?" [vjs, others]The working group agreed to Larry Masinter's suggestion that we make people take the most minimum step of having to send an email to request a document remain PS.
[b] "This whole effort is a waste of time, and you could do more damage
than good." [braden, rosen, perhaps you]Other than stopping the procedure I agreed to carry out without WG consensus is not something I would consider short a family or health emergency.
Eliot
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