I'm not sure I entirely disagree with what Dave's written below, but I do have some caveats.
Firstly, the prerequisites for working group formation under those rules are going to be based on - essentially - forming a stealth working group, which somewhat implies gathering people who know how this works, and I'm not entirely sure that an external group would figure this out. Our processes are fairly impenetrable to outsiders; I have a number of examples of work that has "gone elsewhere" in part because of this. I don't think making this worse has any positive effect.
Secondly, just as I-D is the new Proposed, I worry we're in danger of "left-shifting" our process again, to paraphrase Scott Bradner. I make no claim to know what the outcome of this particular case might be, but in the case of the standards track process, the eventual outcome was ill-fitting names and really not much else, and certainly hasn't gained us anything. I have a horrible feeling we'd end up with the same discussions around creating a mailing list as we do with creating a working group, or something.
Thirdly, it's not actually clear to me that there is a problem with taking on work - and even creating working groups - and then later dropping it if the supposed interest doesn't materialize. I admit it must be quite frustrating for the I-D authors and WG chairs in these cases, but I wonder how much of that is in part because it's seen as a failure. As a radical suggestion, perhaps if we lowered the bar for working group creation, but felt more comfortable closing them, we might make a net gain.
This all said, the crux of Dave's suggestion here is that working groups should essentially form somewhat organically, rather than artificially created with much fanfare. I think there is a strong argument that working groups should be able to form almost spontaneously from pre-existing discussions on existing IETF mailing lists, with minimal friction, and that pre-existing groups should be able to bring their work under the IETF umbrella with similarly minimal roadblocks. I don't think this is in opposition to Dave's proposal, but I admit to approaching this from a different angle.
Most importantly, I think it would be fascinating to look at groups that haven't brought their work to the IETF, and find out why, and decide whether we wanted them to.
On 22 July 2015 at 08:07, Dave Crocker <dhc@xxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:
The IETF tends to charter working groups based on a very large gamble.
Basically, we look for a modestly credible charter and some expressions
of community interest. Then we hope that the charter is sufficiently
substantive and the community interest is real.
Interest, however does not always translate into getting work done,
nevermind getting good-quality work done. Sometimes it does not even
translate into people showing up on the mailing list.[*]
I suggest we alter our model for chartering in order to fix this.
Arguably the proposal is along the lines ofsimilar to what the IRTF is
now doing,
Before chartering, in addition to needing a credible draft charter:
1. There must be an active mailing list for the effort. The word
'active' is key.
2. There must be a credible base of participants; that is, not
just a couple of folk who are active.
3. The effort must demonstrate 'productivity' towards the goals of
the charter.
That is, there must be meaningful community involvement and it must show
that it can get work done.
The criteria of "meaningful involvement" and "productivity" should be
left as entirely subjective. We could spend quite a bit of energy
trying to make them objective, but I don't think it's worth the effort.
It's not that difficult to tell when a group has diverse participation
and is productive.
Simply put, therefore, we should charter a working group only after it
is a de facto working group and the group is already making progress on
its charter.
d/
[*] I've just had to shut down arcmedia for this reason, which is
serving as the trigger for this issue for me, but the issue is broader
and more long-standing, IMO
--
Dave Crocker
Brandenburg InternetWorking
bbiw.net