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Re: An Internet Draft as reference material

2000-09-20 16:40:02
At 10:03 AM 9/21/00 +1100, Robert Elz wrote:
 | 'Another doc series'?  Don't I-Ds already exist as a de facto doc series?
 | Only thing is, no one keeps them around.

That's the point ... if they were kept around we would need something
else that is not kept around.   I know that I send in I-Ds (especially of
early drafts) precisely on the basis that they will be deleted, and not
kept available to the public forever.  If something is going to be
available for people to read (easily) 5 or 10 years from now, then I'm
simply not going to publish it until after it has been reviewed, and there's
been a reasonable chance for my more stupid ideas to be quietly squashed.

I hate to be blunt, but if you're really publishing because the documents
will be destroyed, should you really be publishing at all?

I publish trial balloons and stupid ideas all the time, and don't expect
the archivists to expunge them.  That's part of the process that goes into
creating new technologies, not something to sweep under the carpet.

 | That's not my issue - I just need to be able to reference materials in
all
 | phases of development, without those references expiring constantly.

How do you reference the conversations that take place in the IETF WG
meetings?   That is also part of the development process.   I-D's ought to
be being treated just like those conversations...

It's part of the development process, but it's not a formal document.  If
there are minutes of those conversations, I'd love to see them kept.  If
there aren't, there's no document to keep.

Simon St.Laurent
XML Elements of Style / XML: A Primer, 2nd Ed.
XHTML: Migrating Toward XML
http://www.simonstl.com - XML essays and books