--On Tuesday, July 07, 2015 10:37 +0200 Eliot Lear
<lear(_at_)cisco(_dot_)com> wrote:
At
this point we have enough experience with naming to be
reluctant to adopt flat namespaces when avoidable, I think.
Do we have any reason to believe that we will be scaling a DOI
to beyond the use of RFC such that a flat name won't suffice?
Additional hierarchy comes with its own complexities.
Eliot,
Your question takes us to other questions to which I don't know
the answer... but they do have implications for the community.
I note that I would know the answers if I were privy to
international IAB discussions, RSOC discussions, and discussions
within the RFC Editor function but, by and large I'm not (and
you may know more about some of this than I do). For example:
There were discussions for a while about the RFC Editor taking
on publications for some other bodies. When I was last
involved, it wasn't clear whether, if that happened, it would be
as a fifth stream or a separately-named and identified document
series. I also don't know whether idea is now completely deal
or might come back up some day soon. I also don't know what the
contract with Crossref says or how they feel about assigning
multiple identifiers to the same publisher (or, if they will
allow it, what they charge for the second one). For the reasons
that Melinda discussed (abbreviated above), I think that having
a different publication series use the same DOIs as the
IETF/IAB/IRTF/ISE RFC Series would be a decision that community
should be consulted on, with the option of using a little
apparent hierarchy as a better way to resolve the problem than
debates about opacity.
FWIW, my experience suggests that while I would agree that
"Additional hierarchy comes with its own complexities.",
providing for the possibility of cleanly adding additional
hierarchy often does not. "1.1149" is no more complex than
"rfc1149". It might involve more complexity (or make it easier
to have different staff maintain databases) when one adds
"2.54321" in association with a different document series or
subset. And, course, for someone looking up a DOI through DOI
lookup mechanisms, they are all opaque strings and nothing makes
any difference.
john