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Re: "IETF consensus" in IANA considerations [was Re:Last Call: CR-LDP Extensions for ASON to Informational ]

--On Thursday, 30 January, 2003 15:53 -0500 Thomas Narten <narten@us.ibm.com> wrote:

If 2434 doesn't modify them, then we are, for better
or worse, back into the situation we were in with 2119 --
documents could either use it or could not refer to it but,
instead, make up their own defintions.

That has always been and continues to be an option.  But for
the majority of documents, chosing from a menu of well-defined
choices seems to be simpler for everyone. IANA also has to be
able to understand what needs to happen, for instance, and the
burden on IANA shouldn't be excessive either. Sticking to
well-known definitions when possible seems to help here.
Absolutely. Otherwise, this discussion wouldn't be worth the trouble. But, if you are going to define "IETF Consensus" as "Publication as an RFC" then

- We don't need the added term to add confusion.

- We open up a loophole case in which a document comes
to the RFC Editor, then to the IESG. The IESG decides
it is a bad idea, and puts a disclaimer on it that says
"this is a terrible idea". The RFC Editor decides to
publish it anyway. We now have an RFC that, regardless
of its other properties, clearly does not represent IESG
consensus that it is a good idea. But whatever it calls
for is eligible for registration.

The fact that there has been significant traffic on this
probably justifies an update / clarification.  For the
record, I  don't care what that clarification is although:



	* I think pushing all of these things toward standards
	track would be a mistake.



I agree. That is why there are categories like "expert
review", or "First Come First Served"




But the "expert review" is, in my experience in most cases, a 
sanity check by one person, not the judgement of the community 
that something is appropriate.  So it responds to one of the 
possible cases, but not the others.




	* I think that an intermediate position between
	"standards track document" and "RFC publication" is a
	desirable thing to have, when the WG's position is
	really that some determination of consensus and
	reasonableness by the IETF (not just by IANA) is
	desirable.



The menu choice out of 2434 that I suggest to people for the
above is "Expert Review".



See above.

   john