Update CIP process to maintain general relevance for complex technical proposals

[Ryun1]

How is best to organise proposals and problem statements which offer significant complexity beyond the average technical expertises of CIP readers.

this issue has been raised from discussions around

• CIP-0161? | Ouroboros Phalanx - Breaking Grinding Incentives #1065

[rphair]

In the course of writing this comment:

• CIP-0161? | Ouroboros Phalanx - Breaking Grinding Incentives #1065 (review)

... I inadvertently drafted some suggestions of:

Why a "complexity boundary" is necessary for some CIPs

(beyond the general, but weak, social reasoning that "all CIPs should be understandable & accessible to everyone)

governance decisions: regarding both inclusion in hard forks and potential funding propositions

Where to impose a "dividing line" between levels of complexity

(with the assumption there need be no more than 2 of those levels):

• an entry level: allowing non-specialist readers to more easily confirm this proposal in [the above governance context]
• a full specification level: with everything as you have written to make this proposal understood & implemented by responsible stakeholders, as you originally conceived (with already given apologies for using the word "academic" to refer to the density of detail × esoteric subject matter)

How to format a document so this boundary is maintained

It remains at your discretion whether this would have to exist as 2 separate documents, as opposed to a single document with an appendix. ...
... links to other-named files, like SPEC.md ... should work at least in the top level directory)

... including links to subdirectories, as currently in CPS-0021, as soon as this issue is fixed:

• Relative pathname links still broken, document anchors lost cf-cip-frontend#51

Let's leave this issue riding for 2 weeks — tagged for Triage at the next meeting, and trying to tag other "long CIP authors (@bwbush & hopefully more) — and at that time we can collate all suggestions before (suggestions above + any modifications & additions) and then I/we can post a PR to update CIP-0001 out of it all.

[rphair]

@Ryun1 @nhenin I'm taking this issue out of Triage since my last comment, outlining how this can be addressed in CIP-0001 (and likely with a page on the Wiki which would talk about the "human factors"), has not been disputed and I've added such an update to my TODO list for the next CIP-0001 "overhaul" (which I plan to do after the Summit & CIP process discussions that are likely to take place there).