Subject: Re: Tighter admission policy for I-Ds (was: blank!)

From: Vernon Schryver <[email-masked]>
Date: Sat, 21 Aug 1999 08:33:49 -0600 (MDT)

> From: Scott Bradner <[email-masked]>

> some people in this discussion seem to think that most (or some) ADs
> would have the time to review (however quickly) IDs to see if they
> should be published - speaking for myself, don't bet on it
>
> in addition I think it would be a real shame to change the direction
> of the IETF that much - we have benefited  greatly from IDs that
> have come out of left field (not all of them but some of them)
> and it does not seem in the IETF's general interest (which is producing
> the best technology) to block or inhibit a source of input to our process.

Gresham's Law says essentially that if you don't block or inhibit some
sources of input, the bad input will make the good extinct.

If you look compare the percentage of bad output in the last 500 RFC's or
the last 1000 I-D's with the percentage of bad output in the first 500
RFC's, or any pair of reasonably separated samples, you will see that
Gresham's Law is operating on the IETF.

To put it another way, how soon do you figure that it will stop being
worthwhile for most people to even skim the announced I-D abstracts looking
for something to worth reading?   I can remember when most drafts were
interesting.  Now, a list of titles of I-D's is only a little better than
list of subject lines in a newsgroup.

Or to put it yet another way, how long before the stream of I-D's follow
the evolution of the mailinglist that became the comp.protocols.tcp-ip
newsgroup?  Do you know anyone who reads that newsgroup today?  I don't
think I do, but original the mailinglist was universally read among
people who cared about IP kinds of things.

Or yet another, what percentage of I-D's eventually appear as RFC's?
What percentage of Informational RFC's are ever implemented or even
read after publication?  (the last value might be approximated by
looking at statistics from FTP servers such as venera.isi.edu;
count fetches of individual RFC's.)

Vernon Schryver    [email-masked]

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From: "Donald E. Eastlake 3rd" <[email-masked]>
Date: Sun, 22 Aug 1999 10:44:21 -0400

From:  Vernon Schryver <[email-masked]>
Date:  Sat, 21 Aug 1999 08:33:49 -0600 (MDT)
Message-Id:  <[email-masked]>

>> the best technology) to block or inhibit a source of input to our process.

I agree with Scott.

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From: "Donald E. Eastlake 3rd" <[email-masked]>
Date: Sun, 22 Aug 1999 10:44:21 -0400

I agree with Scott.