--On Tuesday, 29 January, 2008 02:39 +0100 Frank Ellermann <nobody@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote: >> I think procedural documents are different. The activity of >> considering and discussing them is disruptive of the >> community. > > I guess that's because you feel they are very important. > Often I think about topics I consider as very important, "oh > no, I have no time for this, why must they screw *now* with > it, nothing is horribly wrong with how it is", etc. No, it is for another reason entirely. My personal criterion for when it is reasonable to approve, e.g., a standards-track document is when that document represents rough consensus among those who care, are materially concerned, and have sufficient competence to have an opinion. That implies that, if there is a piece of technical work about which I do not care and am not concerned, it is reasonable for me to ignore it and keep working on things I do care about. Because process documents --especially ones that propose to make fairly fundamental to 2026-- affect every one of us and everything we do in the IETF, a Last Call on one should be construed as a statement by the IESG that the topic is important enough that we should all lay aside whatever technical work we are doing and review it. That "laying aside" process is a big enough deal (and disruptive enough of other work) that I believe there should be at least some minimal evidence that the community cares and believes that the proposed solution is either the correct one or one on which we can reasonably build. Incidentally, the reason I tend to oppose, or think we should be very cautious about, process BOFs is a corollary of the above: I'm uncomfortable having process decisions made by the subset of the community who would rather spend their time in process BOFs or at face to face process WG meetings, rather than the whole community. At the risk of prompting a note from Spencer, I would almost prefer that we tell people that, by registering for an IETF meeting, they agree to run the risk of having to spend some time in a process meeting, then select an appropriate number of people at random and make them come. It would almost certainly not work, but it would at least be far more representative than what happens when we schedule a process BOF against substantive WG sessions. john _______________________________________________ Ietf@xxxxxxxx https://www1.ietf.org/mailman/listinfo/ietf