I'm sorry, but I agree with Keith about this. The _entire_ purpose of an IETF
list is to have such discussions. We are building protocols here and details
are everything. If someone isn't comfortable with that, then they don't belong
on the list. And if that then causes nontechnical looky-lous to unsubscribe,
then that's a good thing, not a bad thing that warrants the creation of another
list.
My personal opinions about what discussions should happen where aside, I know
of no rule in the IETF that WGs can't have more than one list. So if you want
to do things this way then you can.
However -- and now we're leaving personal opinion and getting into matters of
formal procedure -- if protocol details and implementation experience are to be
discussed elsewhere then that "elsewhere" is an IETF list. Period. And this
then means that IETF rules apply to this other list. It therefore has to be
mentioned in the WG charter and it has to be archived in accordance with IETF
archiving practices. Neither of these conditions are being met for the IPPDEV
at the present time as far as I can tell.
Does any of this matter? The answer is yes, it most certainly does. Speaking as
a member of the IETF directorate, and one who might well be asked to review
this WG's output at some point by the Application ADs, I frequently review the
details of the technical discussions that have taken place when I review a
document, especially if I didn't participate in the discussion at the time. I
normally do this by reviewing my own archives of the WG list. However, I didn't
pick up on the 5-Nov-1997 announcement of the formation of this separate list,
so now my archive of this WG's lists is incomplete. (I just took steps to
rectify this.) And given that there are no other archives, at least as far as I
can tell, I will say that should I be called upon to review this WGs output and
I find that I cannot track down the specifics of some decision in the archives
I have I would have no choice but to formally object to the advancement of the
specification.
In short, this is far from a laughing matter. This group has already seen fit
to do much of its work in phone conversations rather than via email. That's
fine as long as those conversations are summarized on the list (and as far as I
can tell they have been), but it means even less documentation is present in
the list archives and makes any additional of this sort even more problematic.
Ned