On 18-jan-04, at 19:39, Bob Braden wrote:
So let's consciously endeavor to ensure that sigificant
non-standards documents -- responsible position papers, white papers,
new ideas, etc. -- become RFCs.
Sigh. Even more RFCs. Pretty soon we're going to need a 32-bit RFC
number space.
(Making Internet Drafts into an archival series seems like a terrible
idea to me, but that is a different topic.)
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. 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. (Note that this brings us closer to what RFCs used to be 15
years or so ago.) 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. 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.
I think there is some middle ground where expired drafts that are
referred to in non-expired drafts are kept, as well as any drafts that
are implemented and possibly drafts that a certain n number of people
feel are interesting in some way.