Iljitsch van Beijnum wrote:
>
[..]
> Actually it's pretty much the same topic, as there needs to be a way to
> preserve drafts that are important in some way or another.
If it is important, it'll progress the work of some group in the
IETF and be archived as an RFC. If it (the I-D) doesn't capture work
well enough to be archived as an RFC then it ought to fade from IETF
I-D storage. If the authors (or someone else) feels strongly that there's
still material in their I-D of value, 'archiving' it on a personal website
for google to find.
Or put differently, it is important for the IETF's collective clarity of
focus that IETF-hosted I-Ds decay and disappear if not actively maintained.
Whether or not an interested 3rd party (or I-D authors) maintain their I-Ds
beyond the expiration date is a separate issue.
> One way to
> do this would be to make all drafts that are worth preserving an RFC.
> This means drastically lowering the standards for what can be published
> as an RFC.
Is the standard for Informational currently that onerous?
> Another way to do it would be to simply archive all
> drafts. I agree this has the unpleasant side effect that all those
> drafts that become obsolete (or are so from inception) stay around
> forever.
Yes, that's a major problem. Organizations need to clean out their
clutter on a regular basis just like individuals do.
> But it's still better than the current situation, where making
> something an RFC means an incredible amount of work for many people,
> but not doing it means that ideas that may have taken days or weeks to
> write down are pretty much lost forever. Even the emails announcing the
> availability of new drafts are archived longer.
Then perhaps we encourage WG members to post a summary of their non-RFC
ideas to the WG mailing list around the time when work is wrapping up.
The ideas will thus survive (to be found through Google) as long as the mailing
list archive is around. If the author wants something longer lived, there's always
personal websites.
cheers,
gja
--
Grenville Armitage
http://caia.swin.edu.au
I come from a LAN downunder.
