On one point ...
On Mon, Sep 1, 2014 at 1:34 PM, manning bill <bmanning@xxxxxxx> wrote:
Well then you’d have to rein in the IAB… :)>
> On 9/1/14, 7:58 PM, Michael StJohns wrote:
>> We seem to be getting (or I seem to be noticing) a lot more drafts that aren't associated with a specific working group, or are pre-WG adoption. I'm finding myself at a loss for where to go on some of these to "discuss" that isn't off-topic for whatever list I might be directed to.
>>
>>
>> How about
>
> [all of that]...
>
>
> Or actually using our working group process?
>
There was a period of time when drafts included a pointer to the mailing list where discussion was expected to take place.
That useful bit of capability was dropped in the advance of progress. It was determined that pre-WG discussions would usually
get lost in transition to IETF sponsored lists, so everything should occur on IETF sponsored lists… which never happens. :)
I just checked with my fellow ADs, and haven't found anyone who's closely vetting requests for mailing lists that we see submitted using the procedure at the bottom of http://www.ietf.org/list/nonwg.html. I'd like for the mailing list topics to be IETF related (or at least Internet related), but that's the only thing I look at.
Please let us know if you have a problem requesting a non-WG mailing list.
Thanks,
Spencer, as AD
tl;dr :
I wasn't there at the time, but my understanding was that the non-WG mailing list procedure was put in place for a few reasons, including these:
We had mailing lists (including working group mailing lists!) that were hosted at domains that were no longer in use. This made chasing archives complicated.
Not all IETF participants had an obvious place to create non-WG mailing lists.
When non-WG mailing list topics morphed into WG mailing list topics, we hoped people would have been aware of the IETF IPR policy, duty to disclose, etc.
All of those problems return if we're restrictive about approving non-WG mailing lists.