When considering some recent appeals, the IESG discovered that we have very little guidance about the meaning of "experiments" in relation to Experimental RFCs. RFC 2026 refers to work which is "part of some research or development effort" and the IESG has adopted some guidelines to discriminate between Experimental and Informational documents (see http://www.ietf.org/u/ietfchair/draft-iesg-info-exp-01.html ). But beyond that, we do not know what constitutes an acceptable experiment on the Internet. The IESG notes that the community could establish a variety of guidelines describing what is and is not acceptable in experiments. Historically, the IESG has made decisions based on its perception that there is a strong desire in the community to publish technology that is being deployed experimentally. We encourage community discussion and development of more specific guidelines on operational conflicts caused by experiments and how this should affect what we choose to publish. (However we recommend that such discussion focus on the general issue rather than the specifics of any case.) Brian Carpenter for the IESG _______________________________________________ Ietf@xxxxxxxx https://www1.ietf.org/mailman/listinfo/ietf