Subject: Re: Call for Comment: RFC 4693 experiment

From: Fred Baker <[email-masked]>
Date: Fri, 18 Jan 2008 09:07:05 -0800

On Jan 17, 2008, at 12:04 PM, Brian E Carpenter wrote:
Just as a reminder, the idea was to have something *easier  
and cheaper* than RFCs but more organized than arbitrary web  
pages. Fred might note that "cheaper" with his IAOC hat on ;-).

I do indeed. That said, I'm paying for the RFC Editor's office  
anyway, so not asking them to work on a specific document doesn't  
necessarily save me money - what would save money is not having them  
work on a large subset of documents. From my perspective, what is  
costly in RFC development is the amount of time it takes and the  
hoops one jumps through to do and to respond to review. It doesn't  
cost money per se, but it costs time, and in my wallet time is more  
valuable. 

<heresy>
If you really want to argue that IONs are of value in the sense of  
not having the RFC editor edit and publish them, the question we want  
to ask is what the quality of an ION's English grammar (perhaps the  
RFC Editor's biggest value-add) and how does it compare to that of an  
RFC? If an RFC is not noticeably better, do we need the RFC Editor's  
office AT ALL?
</heresy>

Personally, that is a consideration I want to make very carefully;  
the amount of work the RFC Editor puts into an RFC varies quite a bit  
(something about the grammar skills of its author), and some  
documents really benefit from the process. If we were to decide we  
didn't need the RFC Editor any more, I would expect the IAOC to  
make consultative editorial services available to working groups so  
that documents headed to the IESG had already been through that process.

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