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Re: Wikis for RFCs

2011-09-19 11:15:12
+1
I also support the idea of every RFC havving the associated wiki.


On Fri, Sep 16, 2011 at 12:36 PM, Paul Hoffman 
<paul(_dot_)hoffman(_at_)vpnc(_dot_)org>wrote:

On Sep 16, 2011, at 9:39 AM, Keith Moore wrote:

On Sep 16, 2011, at 10:52 AM, Cyrus Daboo wrote:

Again I would like to bring up the idea of every RFC having an
associated wiki page(s). The goal here is to provide a way for implementors
to add comments, annotations, clarifications, corrections etc to augment the
RFCs. Whilst such commentary can often be found on IETF mailing lists after
an RFC is published locating those and searching them can be tedious - plus
the full history of discussion on various points is often not relevant to an
implementor - all they need to know is what is the correct way to do it now.

Doing something like this would obviously require some investment in
additional infrastructure. There are also questions about how we would
maintain the integrity of the information on the wiki pages, but I think
those are things we can easily address.

This is something that could be implemented on a volunteer basis as an
experiment.  If it worked, perhaps IETF could be convinced to take it over.

Volunteer moderating of such a Wiki could easily lead to the wiki being of
little or no value, and being an embarrassment to the IETF. Consider an RFC
that might be construed as supporting the use of NATs on the Internet. Open
commenting on the RFC could be fodder for certain people commenting about
the applicability of the RFC because NATs Are Evil. There would then likely
be counter-comments from people who feel that NATs Have Value. Such
comments, if moderated, could be very valuable to an implementer who knows
about the RFC but not the bigger picture; unmoderated comments would be no
more useful than some of the permathreads on the WG list that created the
RFC.

Wikipedia is about the only example of working volunteer moderation, and
even then, there are cabals that supported by the paid management. Few, if
any, of the unmanaged wiki sites have long-lasting value.

--Paul Hoffman

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