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Re: borderline offtopic about examples

2008-07-08 02:37:41

Please remember this line of argument and experience when the
IESG issues the promised document promoting 2606 to a firm
requirement.  :-(

FWIW, I completely agree.  Further fwiw, I tried, long before I
got upset at the blocking DISCUSS, to edit the example changes
into the working copy of 2821bis, trying to preserve the
diversity of the 821/2821 example domains in the process.   I
didn't run out of domains (having not tried the "append
'.example' to everything trick, partially on the theory that it
would add, rather than reduce, confusion).  I spent hours, not
days, on it, but... Tony and I have now discovered several
domains that I missed, at least one place where the example was
changed but text referring to it was not, etc.   Maybe I would
have gotten it right if I spent more time on it.  Probably we
could get it right if a lot of people looked at it.   But the
notion that one can just go in and quickly change the examples
in a document this large is, from my experience (and apparently
yours), just a fantasy.

I do believe that I have all of the places identified now so
that, if people wanted option (2), we could get it right with
one more pass by me and a review/recheck by others, so I don't
intend this note to influence the outcome of the poll.  But, in
the general case, I think it would be a bad mistake for the IESG
to insist on changing examples to 2606 form in revised large and
complex documents, just because of the risk of introducing new
errors.

    john


--On Tuesday, 08 July, 2008 10:53 +0200 Arnt Gulbrandsen
<arnt(_at_)oryx(_dot_)com> wrote:


I prefer (1) as such changes may entail more than simply
adding  .example at the end of the domain names.

A little off-topic, but I feel like ranting.

IMO, adding .example to all the domains would be entirely
insufficient. Both people and software are good at recognizing
the common TLDs, and turning something like jrandom(_at_)sun(_dot_)com
into jrandom(_at_)sun(_dot_)com(_dot_)example doesn't change everyone's
perception. Too many people will pick up the "TLD" .com while
skimming or reading, too many scrapers will ignore .example.

If an example is to be changed and still keep its value to the
reader, then it has to be edited with care. A global search
and replace isn't care.

And an on-topic remark: I tried to edit the examples in either
2821 or 2822 into 2606ese a couple of years ago, but gave up.
2606 didn't provide enough domains for me to do the job well.
Maybe a better editor could do it. Or maybe not. Jon Postel
chose to use more domains than 2606 provides, and IMNSHO Jon
Postel was good enough at writing RFCs.

Arnt