Why would someone like to preserve some thing that has been found to
be not worth publishing as an RFC? What is next? Click on XX for paper
published in Sept 2000 of Issue of IEEE Transactions on
Communications, and click on YY for papers evaluated and rejected for
Sept 2000 Issue of IEEE Transactions on Communications.
If an idea is good, it will always re-surface in the better form and
if it is bad, who cares whether it is archived or not. If an idea was
rejected because it was pre-mature, the author will most likely submit
it later in some other form. It is hard to believe that mankind is
losing pearls of wisdom by throwing away rejected IDs.
Those who are concerned about history - I thought there is enough
history in the minutes of IETF meetings, and other reports and list
archives where all good drafts are discussed any way.
Even then, one may possibly make a case for preserving working group
ID-s to keep trail of the discussions, but individual submissions are
what they are - drafts of work in progress and not worth preserving. I
see no benefit in preserving them because if the authors see any
values in their work, they can always submit these works to
conferences and journals by suitably developing them further. It will
be a bad idea to make IETF a free archival publication centre for all
kind of materials.
Cheers,
--brijesh
Ennovate Networks Inc.