> From: Ted Hardie <hardie@xxxxxxxxxxxx> > And the point I'm trying to make is that there are multiple records. > When we have >a mailing list like "ietf-types" or "ietf-languages" where there is a long term > community of interest around a specific issue, should a discussion there > be taken into account when assessing an individual submission? I think >the answer is "it depends" and certainly may be "yes". It should not over-ride > ... I'm bothered by the talk of "community of interest" and "support" as if they were fungible, as if every community of interest is the same as the IETF. That is a potentially catastrophic slippery slope. There are very good reasons for IEEE PARs. Turf is the most fought over commodity of standards organizations. Turf is more highly valued than any single document. Letting random groups of people call themselves "communities" and so automagically give themselves the IETF imprimatur is a very bad thing. Whether the random group has a mailing list that includes the string "ietf" in its private part should be obviously irrelevant, but judging from recent cases, isn't. Whether the group's mailing list happens to use an ietf.org domain name is close to irrelevant. Whether the supposed "community" includes leaders of other standards organizations should also obviously be irrelevant, but evidently isn't. Instead of a "default no" for BCPs or standards track RFC from individual submissions, it would be better to make it a simple "no." If the IETF does not feel like investing the substantial effort and delays to form a WG and the rest of the tiresome, formal IETF dance, then that in itself is proof that the issue is unworthy of the IETF's official seal. Previous efforts to borrow the IETF's printing press and official seal have involved "Informational." Evidently the many forces that want to borrow the IETF's seal have figured out that "Informational" is not valuable enough and are trying a new tactic. Giving BCP or standards track to individual submissions is evil on more than one front. It's not just that it risks blessing non-standards and deluting the value of BCP and the standards track. It is evidence that the IETF as an organization is getting lazy about its real work. If every I-D were worth publishing, there would never have been a need for WGs, Last Calls, and the rest. The whole "community consensus" thing is absolutely required for anything that deserves the word "standard." You can't have a worthwhile standards publisher without the work of editing. Other standards bodies use voting. Book publishers use editors. The IETF uses "consensus". Letting the editors off the hook for jobs will have results as bad in their own way as results we saw from letting the directors of Enron and MCI sleep on their jobs. The IESG, IAB, and ADs are not the IETF and do not define the IETF consensus. They might gauge it, but if it does not exist outside them, then it does not exist. It is definitely not good that the IETF is spending so much time writing a job description and paying so little attention to ostensibly important Internet standards like language tags. It's not only true that "A [standards committee's] gotta know [its] limitations," but it must also know what it doesn't care about enough to work on. If the IETF doesn't want to work on language tags by having a WG and the rest of those delays and work, then so be it. Let the standards body that evidently does care do it...unless the incredible "I'm gona tell the Liason on you" threat was the vacuous, standards committee politicing as usual that it sounded like. Vernon Schryver vjs@xxxxxxxxxxxx _______________________________________________ Ietf@xxxxxxxx https://www1.ietf.org/mailman/listinfo/ietf