A paper publication brings an important element - the market. Folks have to pay large $$$ for paper journals. This allows a process known in capitalistic societies as "voting with your feet". If you feel a particular journal or it's peer review policies have become corrupt, you don't pay for the journal anymore. The journal then ceases to be. Other than a governmental approach (as if ICANN could remove the IESG's "mandate from heaven"...), an approach anchored firmly in the value of currency is pretty sound. The other side of this coin is that there is typically a professional society backing the journal. Is it time for NANOG to become that type of organization? (i.e. AMA, ASME, ABA, to name just a few). As most employers will pay for professional society dues and journal subscriptions, the economic impact on the actual participants would be minimal. Flicking a virtual match at the gasoline can, Daniel Golding Senior Network Engineer NetRail, Inc. On Thu, 30 Mar 2000, Roeland M. J. Meyer wrote:
William Allen Simpson Sent: Thursday, March 30, 2000 7:48 AM
The IESG has become severely politicized these days, and has some serious internal problems.
If this keeps up, these tracks will be re-routed.
They've even rejected Bradner and my DES retirement BCP, although virtually every IETF working group from PPP to SAAG recommended it. We're planning on asking the RFC Editor for publication as Informational, instead. Presumably Manning can go that route, too.
My "IKE/ISAKMP Considered Harmful" was the only draft ever summarily removed from the internet-drafts FTP site, because it is critical of the IESG. It was published by Usenix ;login: in December.
Given this sort of behavior, I wonder how much longer the IESG will retain their credibility?
There are some pretty good starts on operational web sites, linked to by the NANOG page. It would be helpful to be more active in maintaining (actively organizing) the links. What formalities do we need to have such a thing come to fruition?
Do we really need a formal paper (hardcopy) publication?
Given recent output of IAB, IESG, and IETF, it is becoming clear that these orgs are no longer purely technical. Rather, they are becoming highly politicized. As such, they will lose credibility for their value-proposition, as being apolitical technical bodies. Once their neutrality is gone, they will soon follow. They sad part is that those geeks don't see that.