Email mailstore and eXtensions To Revise or Amend
charter-ietf-extra-01

[Ballot comment]
I do not object to the actually proposed work. But I would prefer this not to be open ended. It has been my experience that groups kept open just in case future work might appear tend in the long run to loose the interest of the experts that should pay attention to such new work. I prefer the mini-work group model for that sort of thing. But I appear to be in the minority on this point, so I will not get in the way of chartering.

Do I read the last paragraph correctly to give guidance to _other_ WGs? That seems somewhat...aspirational :-)

[Ballot comment]
I do not object to the actually proposed work. But I would prefer this not to be open ended. It has been my experience that groups kept open just in case future work might appear tend in the long run to loose the interest of the experts that should pay attention to such new work. I prefer the mini-work group model for that sort of thing. But I appear to be in the minority on that point, so I will not get in the way of chartering the group.

Do I read the last paragraph correctly to give guidance to _other_ WGs? That seems somewhat...aspirational :-)

[Ballot block]
This charter seems extremely vague about the actual work to be
pursued. Specifically, the graf starting with "From time to
time..." implies that like TCPM, this is basically a maintenance
group, but the graf starting with "The working group may"
seems to leave open the door for a complete revision/bis of
all three of the above listed protocols. Without taking a position
on whether such a revision is a good idea, if our plan is to
have a WG do that, then this charter should make that clear.


Specifically, it should say one of:

- A major revision is out of scope
- The WG will study the question of a revision and if one is
  needed recharter for it.
- The WG is chartered to do a bis/revision of the following
  protocols.

And the milestones should (regardless of date) reflect that.

[Ballot comment]
The charter has several clearly in-scope things and several clearly out-of-scope things.  However, POP (RFC 1939) is conspicuous by its absence. Please add it to either the list of things that the WG is allowed to work on or the list of things that it is not.

[Ballot comment]
I'm not going to block external review, but I agree with Warren's comments about the open-ended scope, and I will go further to say that I don't think long-lived working groups are a good idea for work areas that are usually quiet but with occasional flareups. My experience is that, when such groups are quiet, people quit paying attention to them. Then when people try to bring new work they are likely to get ignored unless do the work needed to get people's attention --which is much what would happen if the group didn't exist in the first place.

I'd be much happier chartering a group to work on the specific things people have in mind. It can always be rechartered if more work comes in.

[Ballot comment]
No objection - though agree with Warren's comments, I think it needs to be tighter scoped on what will be the considerations for input.

[Ballot comment]
No objection / yes, but I did have some nits:

1: "When such bursts coincide, it???s important to give them a home." -- it's formatting.

2: "Upon formation, the working group will consider any existing Internet Drafts that could be appropriate for its processing." -- at first I felt that this sentence was very vague and open-ended, but then I realized that it is a larger issue - the charter starts with "These include in particular, but are not limited to, the following: [IMAP, SIEVE]". The "not limited to", combined with the above sentence makes it sound like the group can choose any drafts, not just IMAP / SIEVE ones. Also, what if these drafts are in other WGs? Does it take them? Advise / consult?

3: "While an interest poll for a new related idea is fine, the ..." - I'm not 100% sure what this is trying to say; it should only seriously consider things which are IDs?

4: "Also eligible for consideration is incorporation of accumulated" -> " Also eligible for consideration is the incorporation of accumulated" (nit, sorry OCD kicked in!)

5: "However, any new functionality is expected to be pursued via extensions rather than changes to the basic protocols wherever possible." - I think "base protocols" reads better (also a nit).

[Ballot comment]
I'd be a Yes, except that Alexey isn't a Yes, yet. But this looks like a fine thing to do.

You might consider whether it's worth explicitly pointing out that this working group will likely be long-lived, and is as likely to quiesce as to conclude, when the work queue becomes empty, if that's what you are thinking will happen.