----- Original Message -----
From: "Ayyasamy, Senthilkumar (UMKC-Student)" <saq66(_at_)umkc(_dot_)edu>
To: "Bob Braden" <braden(_at_)ISI(_dot_)EDU>; <fred(_at_)cisco(_dot_)com>
Cc: <ietf(_at_)ietf(_dot_)org>
Sent: Monday, January 19, 2004 1:42 AM
Subject: RE: The IETF Mission
Let's now consider usability grounds. The "pet" idea RFC series
doesn't
serve the purpose:
o If one is revisiting the old ideas, they will most likely prefer
mailing list archives (due to its descriptive nature) than RFC.
Ummm, no. Most IETF mailing lists are pretty inaccessible to non-WG
participants because no one ever summarizes ideas before WG last call.
Some are more inaccessible because of posting volume levels. Some are
becoming more inaccessible because they don't restrict posting to
members and are filling their archives with spam. Professional
networking researchers might have time, but might not, and people
doing prior art searches for ideas that they've just been sued over
might make time, but if our mailing list archives continue to be our
institutional memory, we'll continue to suffer from Alzheimers (except
that we lose our minds first-in-first-out, while Alzheimers takes your
mind last-in-first-out).
It's not like people who weren't there can find things easily in the
RFC series (note the recent discussion on end-to-end as the TCP
research community realized that they weren't sure what was, and was
not, TCP). I-D draft respositories are an order of magnitude more
difficult to search, because ideas come, go, and come again in the
lifetime of discussion of a draft (and because, sadly, we rename
drafts for almost no reason when they are adopted as WG items, and
gratuitously challenge people to associate individual draft history
with WG draft history). Mailing list archives are an order of
magnitude more difficult than that (for the reasons previously
stated).
Spencer