IMO the major problem to be solved is IETF throughput, takes far too long to produce RFCs, **years**, and getting worse. Unacceptably long for users of the standards. IESG is a bottleneck, well known, stated in RFC 3773 http://ietf.org/rfc/rfc3774.txt?number=3774, Section 2.6.2 "Workload of the IESG" There are 2 issues to be solved wrt throughput: 1. needs to be vastly increased 2. with no loss in current quality Candidate solution: 1. WG takes over full responsibility for RFC production ==> parallel processing 2. IESG maintains RFC quality with uniform WG process created, maintained, and enforced by IESG. The PROTO team has a 'shepherding' proposal to offload some of the RFC approval work to WGs. IMO this doesn't go far enough to offload the IESG sufficiently to eliminate the IESG bottleneck and create a parallel process at the WG level. WG procedures would be developed to ensure RFC quality. The procedures would be created, maintained, and enforced by the IESG. WGs I participate in are mostly competent and thorough in RFC production, necessary cross-WG review is done, etc. Many comments on this thread that this quality isn't uniform across WGs, and needs to be. I see no reason this couldn't be made to work, proof is that it works like this, successfully, in other SDOs. Jerry Ash _______________________________________________ Ietf@xxxxxxxx https://www1.ietf.org/mailman/listinfo/ietf