harald(_at_)alvestrand(_dot_)no (Harald Tveit Alvestrand) writes:
...
permit me to disagree..... not with your core statement, but with the
statement that citing examples would be counterproductive.
The statement that "a fair amount of crap is published as RFCs" has been
repeated for so long that it's almost become a mantra.
i guess the fact that noone objects to this characterization is either due
to everyone agreeing with it or to what else exactly are you thinking of?
However, in my opinion, for *every single one* of those RFCs, there's a
reason why it was published. Usually there was a supporting constituency,
how about "it was a measurable dayjob objective for at least one editor"
or "because the WG was completely exhausted and the only way they could
get the document out of their collective face was to fling it over the wall?"
when it comes to crap, few documents can compete with RFC's 2065 and 2535.
i don't think that the editors or WGchairs were in any way incompetent, but
even a cursory reading of either document at this stage will demonstrate that
noone had actually read or tried to understand them in their submitted form.
(our long-suffering AD eventually started reading our docs and asking the
kind of simple questions that are really cover for "did you read this
yourself and were you hoping that nobody else would?") i'm one of the
guilty parties -- both as a draft-editor and a positive-hummer.
but it actually does seem counterproductive to me to name documents, WGs,
WGchairs, ADs, authors, and editors as having produced "crap". i think if
we focus on the general crap-fact we can do much good to reduce overall-crap
and that no special focus is needed on specific crap-fact like which docs
are actually crap.
and at least some opinion that publishing it was better for the Internet
than not publishing it - certainly, for every standards-track RFC, there
was at one time a majority view in the IESG that such was the case.
well, no. the iesg at the time of 2065 was clearly out smoking pot on the
back deck, there is no possible way that it could have been seen as "good
for the internet" or even "good, at all." exhaustion, dayjobs, and miasma.
If we are to change the process that produces this stuff, we HAVE to
understand what the reasons are that reasonable, competent people produce
things that are sub-par, broken or "crap". And IMHO, we can't do that
without saying what these unacceptable results of the process are.
to your first statement i agree. to your second i very much disagree.
Moving from the generic to the specific might actually be an useful
catharsis for the community - and just might change the community opinion
from "a lot of our 3000 RFCs are crap" to "there are 30 bad RFCs, 300 that
could have been better and 3000 reasonably OK ones", or even to "the
quality control system does not work well enough, there are too many
borderline cases".
unfortunately there's universal/objective crap, like 2065 or 2535, and on
the other hand there's subjective crap where just because i don't like it
doesn't make me expect that noone else found it useful (2181, 1995). if
we try to move from the generic to the specific we'll probably just bog down
in nonuniversal standards for crap and i don't think that's going to help us.
I don't think anonymous, class-based criticism will get us much
further. We need to be specific about what our problems are.
well, if highlighting a difference of opinion is the first step toward
resolving it, then we're on our way.
--
Paul Vixie