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

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.

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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