On Sun, 2006-06-18 at 22:05 -0700, C. M. Heard wrote: > [ follow-ups to IETF discussion list please] > > Of the three possible ways forward suggested by this draft, I think that > the only one that's likely to get done is this one: > > 1. Agree that, apart from day to day efforts to improve efficiency, > the problems with the existing standards track are not serious > enough to justify the effort needed to make substantial changes. > Conclude that [RFC3774] exaggerated the problem and we only need > to make a relatively minor set of clarifications to BCP 9 > [RFC2026]. > > I say this because the newtrk WG has already tried to do the other two > things that were suggested (focusing on document relationships and > reworking the standards track) and failed. The deafening silence on > the WG mailing list suggests to me that the energy has run out of this > WG and it should be closed. > > I believe that two modifications (not clarifications) to RFC 2026 > would suffice: > > - drop the expectation that a document will necessarily ever advance, > and drop the requirement for periodic reviews of documents at PS or DS; > > - drop the "no normative downrefs" rule. > > This last should be done with an absolute minimum of fuss and with no > imposition of requirements to put special notes in the documents > about downrefs. If we can't agree on that, then I would settle for > just the first modification. That would at least get our documented > procedures more in line with the reality that we practice. There isn't necessarily a lack of energy. How to deal with the confusion created by a system failing to organize information? It does not appear to be a satisfactory solution describing the lack of maintenance related to document categorization lame and leave it, as this appears to suggest. When the newtrk wg had last met, there did appear to have been progress made defining a method to formally describe the relationship between sets of documents. Had that proceeded, stable and serialized references would have been established for organized sets. From those references, less effort would be needed to process the categorization, by looking down from the top, rather than by lookup up from the bottom. These two views are very different, and describing a document as a thing unto itself often makes little sense. RFC3377 is an example of an effort to define a set, but this type of approach is clumsy and adds little visibility. Perhaps this organizational effort needs to move elsewhere. The direction that was envisioned for the SRD proposal was to ensure the IETF members compose those sets without altering the individual documents. A follow-on categorization of these sets would cull out the best and most meaningful by raising the status of those sets appropriately. This should overcome maintenance issues and avoid downref problems. Newtrk could still contribute by taking meaningful steps to transform the ever flattening and broadening landscape that offers ever fewer landmarks, by providing form and dimension. RFCxxxx DS PS and BCPxx can be improved by providing the minimalist organization of these documents into Name.Serial sets. XML seems to be a natural way to achieve that goal, which should also be integrated into the IETF HTTP presentations. The construction of the XML documents could even be developed using web-based tools, rather than expecting everyone to use their own XML editors, or to know how to read and check the required syntax. The SRD proposal also allowed a temporary prefix. This prefix conveyed Work In Progress to impose fewer barriers for those wishing to take advantage of these tools at the conception of an idea. The organization of documents into sets could help at very early efforts, all the way to completion. This becomes a forward/downward perspective, as opposed to the current backward/upward perspective, where it become hard to see the forest for the trees. -Doug _______________________________________________ Ietf@xxxxxxxx https://www1.ietf.org/mailman/listinfo/ietf