On Jan 16, 2008, at 11:41 AM, The IESG wrote:
RFC 4693, Section 4 says:
This experiment is expected to run for a period of 12 months,
starting from the date of the first ION published using this
mechanism. At the end of the period, the IESG should issue a call
for comments from the community, asking for people to state their
agreement to one of the following statements (or a suitable
reformulation thereof):
According to http://www.ietf.org/IESG/content/ions/ the first ION
was published 12-Jan-2007. This means the experiment ended last
Saturday, and it's time for the IESG to issue the call for comments.
Please tell us what you think about the experiment. Have IONs been
valuable? Should we continue to make use of this mechanism?
In my opinion, they are over-rated.
The options in the RFC are:
1. This document series has proved useful, and should be made
permanent
2. This document series is less useful than the equivalent
information in RFCs and informal Web pages, and should be
abandoned
3. We cannot decide yet; the experiment should continue
I would argue that (1) has not been shown. Several IONs have been
produced, but I don't see people referring to them. It looks like it
is being treated as a lightweight way to publish something a lot like
an RFC, and I'm not sure why the proper response to our present
situation shouldn't be to figure out what we once had - a lightweight
way to publish an RFC.
Whether we can say that we know for sure that the experiment has been
conclusive, I'm not sure I know. If the community feels that a second
year is necessary to really conclude that, I would be willing to see
that happen. But from my perspective, the lack of current utilization
(not in terms of producing them, which is slowly happening, but of
referring to them and referring others to them) leads me in the
direction of (2).
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