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Re: Call for comment: <draft-iab-doi-04.txt> (Assigning Digital Object Identifiers to RFCs)

2015-07-07 02:37:06
Hi Melinda,

On 7/6/15 9:09 PM, Melinda Shore wrote:
On 7/6/15 6:57 AM, Leif Johansson wrote:
6 jul 2015 kl. 16:10 skrev Andrew Newton <andy(_at_)hxr(_dot_)us
<mailto:andy(_at_)hxr(_dot_)us>>:
I think John's point is that in the IETF we usually do not
interpret lack of feedback as passive approval but rather lack of
any review.
We also depend on active participation.
To be honest, I was completely ignoring the DOI discussion until
someone emailed me directly about it.  The reasons I was staying
away from it include:

1) The IETF is going to do what it's going to do, which tend to be
   whatever a few people in the leadership want it to do.  It's
   unlikely that participation and review is going to change outcomes
   on hobbyhorse projects

2) Bibliographic discussions in the IETF tend to be particularly
   frustrating because there are very few people who actually know
   anything about the subject matter, but everybody's got an
   opinion.  There's a tendency to fall into the "I'm a smart person,
   so perhaps I may not know anything about the field but hey, I'm
   a smart person" trap.  This document contains some incorrect
   statements, or statements so broad as to carry very little
   information, and there doesn't appear to be much interest among
   those participating in the discussion in seeing those corrected.
   That tends to lead to the conclusion that there's no point in
   participating in discussions about bibliographic matters within
   the IETF

There goes the whistle.  Unsupported assertion while claiming same,
Offense.  5 yard penalty.  How about instead pointing out the incorrect
statements and test your assertion?


I think problems 1 and 2 are pervasive throughout the IETF's work
and not isolated to this particular document, but the fact that this
is an area in which so few IETF participants have any expertise
tends to bring it out more strongly.  I suspect it has something
to do with the incredible volume of just plain bad drafts we're
facing these days, and the pressures associated with dealing with those.

Melinda

[BTW, as a (sort-of) side note, if you've read this document you're
aware that it not only contains a discussion of assigning DOIs
to RFCs but also contains a discussion of the use of DOIs within
RFCs, because assigning DOIs to our documents carries with it
the obligation to the issuing body to use DOIs within our own
documents.]


Where in the document does it state any such obligation?  This sort of
overstatement and misinformation is how we end up with a 100-message
sillyThread® on this mailing list.

Eliot

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