At 07:06 PM 3/26/2004, Keith Moore wrote:
But my point, in regards to this proposal, is that the bar for
Informational/Experimental is not "half-baked" nor "won't cause
harm" nor "crap", but whether it provides information is of reasonable use to
the Internet technical community and meets
the (low) editorial/technical standards for RFCs.
For information to be of "reasonable use" it needs to be reasonably accurate.
I disagree. A document which has significant technical errors and
omissions can still be reasonable useful to the technical community.
The document need only be meet general editorial and technical
standards, it need not nor should be subjected to anything more than
a minimal review (beyond that provided by its producers).
Opinions can also be useful, if nothing else to students of history, if the
opinions are clearly labeled as such, and if they help illustrate a
historically important debate.
I have no objection to labels (e.g., Experimental) and standardized
disclaimers in such memos.
These days, for a protocol specification to be of "reasonable use" on a wide
scale it needs to avoid causing harm.
Experimental and Informational memos need not be engineered for
wide scale use. They might just detail an small scale experiment
or detail an existing limited-use protocol.
The standardized disclaimer should caution readers that the document
may not be suitable for implementation/use on the Internet.
There have been too many exploits of security holes and privacy holes in
poorly-designed protocols. While it might be useful to publish an
informational specification of a widely-deployed protocol on the theory that
publishing it will make the public more aware of its limitations and help them
migrate to better protocols, publishing a specification of a hazardous
protocol that is not widely deployed can encourage wider deployment and
increase the risk of harm.
I consider this part of the Informational/Experimental v Standard
Track trade-off. In having a series with minimal review, we accept
risk that such documents will have not adequately address various
considerations.
Keith is trying to raise the bar. I prefer to keep the bar low. I, frankly,
don't see a problem with there being more
crap published as RFCs, whether produced by WGs or produced by individuals.
Publishing crap dilutes the value of the RFC series, and makes it more
difficult for the public to recognize the good work that IETF does.
I agree that it hard to distinguish IETF-produced RFCs from
individually-produced RFCs (this seems to be somewhat by design)
and, I think, a separate issue from crap on the RFC series.
The only distinction I see is that the IETF can produce (by WG
or individual submission to it) crap on any track and Individuals
can only produce crap on Informational/Experimental. While
detailed review focused on the latter might reduce the latter,
I don't see it nearly as problematic as the former.
A certain amount of crap RFCs is to be expected and reasonable
especially on Informational and Experimental tracks (regardless
of producer). Minimal review has been, IMO, sufficient to keep
the amount of crap to acceptable amount.
It also costs money which could be better put to other uses.
Personally, I believe the money spent doing minimal review is
money well spent. However, I would be supportive of use of
volunteer minimal reviewers to cut review costs.
Kurt