Background on the ASRG and this subgroup

Folks,

I just want to give a little background since not everyone may be 
familiar with the IETF and IRTF. Feel free to ask if you want something 
clarified.

This is a subgroup of the ASRG which itself is a research group of the 
IRTF. The key difference between the IRTF and our better known cousin, 
the IETF, is that the IRTF handles longer term research issues while the 
IETF does short term standards. The ASRG itself consists of the main 
list and several subgroups, each of which focuses on some specific 
subset of the spam issues. This subgroup focuses on standards relevant 
to filters.

IRTF groups generally discuss more general or longer term research 
topics. The IRTF is where the seeds for standards are planted and grown, 
and the IETF is where these seeds mature. As certain ideas become 
clarified or more concrete, they are hammered and fleshed out into 
prototype standards or pre-standard drafts. Some of these that are very 
well cooked actually end up as regular standards and are submitted to 
the IETF as such. Others may be transfered to the IETF into working 
groups which develop the standards further.

Since this is a research group, the longer term stuff is important since 
that's where ideas for standards come from. The slight friction between 
the longer term research ideas like MTA/MUA communications and the short 
term stuff like filtering headers is natural here. What the group needs 
to do at certain intervals is to determine whether specific ideas are 
mature enough and have enough support in the community to be developed 
further as standards. This is what we the goal is for the filtering header.

Usually when that happens, a document (usually an Internet Draft) is 
created and discussed outlining the idea, and its pros and cons. Many 
times an actual header, format or protocol is actually defined in such 
document. Most of the time this document, when matured, is either 
submitted to the IETF to be considered as standard OR is submitted to 
the IETF with a request to create a working group which then further 
develops it.

Yakov