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.