Re: Topic drift Re: An Internet Draft as reference material

[Peter Deutsch in Mountain View]

Greg Minshall wrote:
> 
> i think there are two issues.
> 
> one is that when I-Ds were created, there was some controversy, mainly
> revolving around the notion that we already had a forum for people putting out
> ideas (known as RFCs), and that the fact that the public concept of RFC was
> different from our intent, we should stick by our intent (and work on
> educating the public).  if i remember correctly, it was within this part of
> the discussion that we decided that I-Ds would be ephemeral documents.

A couple of people are claiming to represent the intent of people "back
then" - maybe I should go back to the Historical Internet Drafts
Directory and review that debate to see whether everyone is remembering
history correctly. Ooops, I can't do that until there *is* an Historical
Internet Drafts directory!  :-)

Sorry to poke fun, I *do* respect your opinion of what was the group
think intent from tat period, but frankly time has moved on and we all
have different needs than we did back then. I remember this whole thread
getting a treatment something like a year ago and I argued then for
institutional memory. I also argued that some of the participants of the
IETF seem to have developed an exagerated sense of the group's real
importance and ability to control how others perceive it. 

Bottom line is that access to historical information is useful. The IETF
should (and I'm glad to hear, will) make this material available. As
Martha Stewart says, "And this is good".

                                        - peterd


> if *we*, as an organization (or whatever we are) decide that I-Ds should no
> longer be ephemeral documents, then we probably pop right back up in the
> middle of the "should we have two archival document series" discussion again.
> (though frankly i'm not sure the energy is there for at least the "RFC is the
> one" side of the discussion.)
> 
> the second issue, as many have pointed out, is that there is no way to stop
> http://www.internetdraftsforever.com from springing up (hey, maybe it's
> already there!).  certainly, no one is (seriously) trying to prevent that from
> happening.
> 
> i think of the current (officially ephemeral) I-Ds as being like Usenet
> postings (remember those?).  people *do* cite them in articles occasionally,
> dejanews (or whatever) does hang on to them forever, you can (or you could, in
> the past at least) buy CDs full of them.  but, they don't have the "cachet" of
> an RFC.
> 
> i personally would vote for keeping the I-Ds "officially ephemeral", and if
> deja-id pops up to archive them, i'll probably occasionally poke around in
> there myself.
> 
> cheers,  Greg
> 
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