Subject: Re: [newtrk] some questions about WGSs

From: Harald Tveit Alvestrand <[email-masked]>
Date: Wed, 24 Mar 2004 12:00:46 -0800

Dave,

--On 24. mars 2004 07:03 -0800 Dave Crocker <[email-masked]> wrote:

> WGS is designed to be used in a related manner, for wg internal
> coordination.
.....
> This appears to be looking for an IETF-wide labeling change. WGS is not
> it. It is defined to fill the need for various working group internal
> coordination requirements.
.....
> WGS is not a standards-track mechanism, any more than Experimental and
> Informational are.  It serves very different purposes, although
> sometimes it will no doubt show up in a standard-track sequence (as
> does, for example, Experimental or "working group I-D".

Are you talking about the specific dawkins-pstm-twostage proposal here, or 
do you say that all proposals for WGS have these properties?

Since this conversation started out by asking whether there was consensus 
for the concept of WGS in general, without defining it more closely, it 
might be good to say "WGS as defined in draft-dawkins-pstm-twostage-01 
section 2.1" somewhere......

Background/further thinking..... The comments I've heard relative to the 
mechanism in draft-dawkins include:

- I-Ds are permanent anyway, so we might as well accept it and archive the 
WGS documents (I agree)
- We don't need another archival series, we should just push stuff as RFCs 
(I don't agree)
- There should be cross-area review before making something WGS (I'm in two 
minds - depends on where the WGS fits)
- The AD should sign off (or at least be able to veto) before a WGS is 
designated (I don't have an opinion at this time)
- An "Internet that runs on WGS" is even less good than an "Internet that 
runs on Proposed" (I agree)

All of these comments pull the WGS concept in various directions. So I 
don't think we have a common vision of WGS yet.
Should we ask for competing proposals to be published as I-Ds, and try to 
talk about them with labels - with draft-dawkins--01 WGS being designated 
as "WGS(A)"?

                   Harald
 
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---

From: "Spencer Dawkins" <[email-masked]>
Date: Fri, 26 Mar 2004 06:26:26 -0600

From: "Harald Tveit Alvestrand" <[email-masked]>
Sent: Wednesday, March 24, 2004 2:00 PM
Subject: Re: [newtrk] some questions about WGSs

> talk about them with labels - with draft-dawkins--01 WGS being
designated

(How could it ever be wrong to encourage people to send text?)

Dave, Charlie and I have been talking about WGS for not quite a year
among ourselves. There are some questions that were easy for us to
come to consensus on, among the three of us, and some questions that
were not.

I presented our list of tough questions in Seoul, along with the
answers that we've come up with, and I got some feedback from the
newtrk session on that list. I'd like to see any WGS proposals
explicitly answer these questions:

- Can WGs declare WGS on their own, or not?

- Are there any prerequisites, or not?

- Are WGS ephemeral, or not?

- What is the level of recognition that the IETF gives to WGS?

One set of answers is included in
http://www.ietf.org/internet-drafts/draft-dawkins-newtrk-wgs-00.txt,
but - to make this very clear - I can imagine other answers coming
from people with good minds and pure hearts!

Spencer

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