Not disagreeing with your message, but a couple of clarifying points: On 5/3/13 12:41 PM, Tony Hain wrote:
I would agree with you that weighting longer term is the 'right thing', but given that people wait for an RFC number to implement, and then take the position that RFC (PS) == STD, you never get to the longer term because the bar is set so high on the first hurdle that it becomes impossible for people to justify the effort to go for the next one.
When Thomas said "longer-term", I took him to mean *all* of the things that are longer time horizon, like management/mentoring of WGs and chairs, doing more early cross-area participation (including by ADs) in the design of and work on protocols (not just review), etc. In particular, I didn't understand him to mean longer-term as having anything to do with advancement on the standards track. I think the above longer-term goals are important. I think movement along the standards track will be the outcome if we get to working well, but not a goal in-and-of itself.
In any case I don't see 60/40 as a tail-heavy process. If the WG time were cut in half and the IESG/RFC-editor time stayed the same, maybe it would be tail-heavy, but realistically more 'balanced'.
I'll point you to Jari's excellent reminder that "time" is probably the least of the heaviness on the tail end. What is tail heavy is the work investment: We do WG last call reviews, IETF-wide Last Call reviews, directorate reviews, IESG reviews, all at the end of the process. We spend scant little energy (of the wider IETF community and leadership) on early design reviews and protocol development early and in the middle of the document process. As Jari said, that model ends us up with late surprises, lack of transparency, etc., and probably uses much more energy overall than if we invested it earlier in the process. Sure, this can translate to delays, but that's only one (maybe minor) effect of being tail-heavy.
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