Harald,
I don't think this discussion is terribly productive, so I'll shut up after this....
Indeed, it is difficult to have a productive discussion when postings fail to respond to the meat of a proposal with which they disagree, preferring instead to focus on generalities and wordsmithing.
It should not be surprising how consistently discussions like these are derailed in this manner, but for some reason, it still is.
my point, as far as I had one, was that you were making a general statement about arbitrary rules, without reference to any particular set of them.
First your focus, here, on the word "arbitrary" has little or nothing to do with your previous posting. Even if it did, it ignores the meat of the 3-bullet list I gave, choosing to focus on a single vocabulary choice, in one of the bullets, that really is not essential to the points I was (and try to continue to) make.
My best guess is that your focus, here, is merely latching on to the line of distraction that was raised in the private note sent to the two of us.
You have claimed that the I-D submission deadline is arbitrary, despite the fact that people have advanced two separate reasons for them (reduced load on staff just before the meetings and giving people time to read).
Notice how nicely you are ignoring my suggestion of an alternate term: misguided?
Notice that paying attention to that alternate term makes your current focus quite meaningless.
It also might mean you would have to focus on the counter-arguments that have been raised, namely that the rule is not effective against inappropriate late postings and that it has a negative impact on legitimate late postings.
This seems to be the usual way that suggestions for change are met: Focus on fears of abuse that a procedure ostensibly responds to, and ignore observations that they do not work and that they have undesireable negative impacts.
I have claimed that I think your ideas for chopping off working groups that fail to meet fairly rigid deadlines are not useful (because they will be seen as arbiatrary), despite the fact that you think differently.
If you want to re-discuss the working group time limit proposal, please raise it on a separate thread, rather than making it another point of distraction in the current thread.
I suggest that we retire accusations of "arbitrariness" from the discussion, and rather try to discuss real and perceived effects of the rules.
Already done, as you know. You seem to be the only one continuing to use the word. d/ -- Dave Crocker Brandenburg InternetWorking <http://bbiw.net> _______________________________________________ Ietf@xxxxxxxx https://www1.ietf.org/mailman/listinfo/ietf