[Discussion invited on ietf@xxxxxxxx] The IESG received a request under RFC 3933 to run draft-klensin-norm-ref-01.txt as an experiment in loosening the IETF's requirements for normative references in RFCs. The experiment is composed of two parts. The first part allows approved Internet Drafts to reference RFCs at a lower level of maturity, provided that a note explaining the reference is added. One way of looking at this is that it relaxes the requirements for normative downreferences in RFC 3967. The IESG believes that there is sufficient support for this part of the experiment that simply writing a BCP is a better approach than running an experiment. The second part of the experiment proposes that RFCs be allowed to contain normative down references to approved Internet Drafts that have not yet been published as RFCs. According to RFC 3933, the IESG must make a determination of whether an experiment is plausibly useful before it is approved. "The IESG can institute whatever procedures it wishes to make this determination and to avoid denial of service attacks from large numbers of spurious or unimportant proposals. In particular, they might institute a procedure requiring a number of endorsements, or endorsements of a particular type, before the IESG considers the proposal. The IESG is, however, expected to understand that procedures or review processes that act as a mechanism for significant delays do not fall within the intent of this specification." The IESG is new to RFC 3933 experiments and like the rest of the community is still trying to figure out how to evaluate these experiments. In this instance, the IESG issued a last call and the discussion focused around the question of whether it would be a good idea if the IETF tried this experiment. The consensus was by no means clear-cut. The IESG believes it is likely that after more definition, we could eventually get to an experiment for which there is community consensus. However the question of "plausibly useful" includes aspects that were not adequately considered during the last call. In particular, while discussing how to move forward, the IESG realized it had never actually considered who would use the second part of the experiment. When queried, no area director indicated a specific desire to use the experiment to reference an approved Internet Draft from an RFC. The IESG believes the second part of this experiment is unlikely to be useful unless there are IESG members that find it sufficiently compelling to invest time in trying to use the experiment. In the future, it may be desirable to ask for specific intentions of IESG members for experiments that would only be successful with the active participation of some IESG members. The question is: are there IESG members who have a specific need for the proposed experiment and are going to use this proposal in real life? This should not be used to block efforts for change with very strong community support. However it is appropriate to use such endorsements to focus our efforts especially when consensus is mixed or when there are a lot of efforts on the table. The IESG realizes that it needs to be responsive to the community. The IESG also trusts that we all realize that change where there is active, eager support will be more successful than change with inadequate support. So, in conclusion, the IESG seeks comments on whether there is community interest in turning the first part of this experiment into a BCP. The IESG also seeks comments from interested document editors and working group chairs pointing to instances where the second part of the experiment would be useful. In particular, please let the IESG know about upcoming work where being able to reference approved Internet Drafts from RFCs would be useful; please explain how it would be useful. Unless the IESG finds significant cases where the second part of this experiment will be useful, the IESG plans to decline to run that part of the experiment. _______________________________________________ Ietf@xxxxxxxx https://www1.ietf.org/mailman/listinfo/ietf