Subject: RE: Number of authors on RFCs

From: Eastlake III Donald-LDE008 <[email-masked]>
Date: Tue, 26 Mar 2002 16:26:31 -0500

If you look at the history of RFCs, they were originally paper documents
that were copied and physically distributed. They really were requests for
comments, and the author info was essential.

In drafts, which are pretty fluid, it seems to me that author info is quite
useful. I've phoned authors of drafts as well as emailed them.

For individual informational and experimental RFCs, it seems to me that the
author info continues to be very important. While not nearly as request-like
as early RFCs, it seems to me that individual informational RFCs and drafts
can be part of an ongoing debate.

I suppose detailed author info on standards track RFCs is less important.
But I get contacted periodically concerning RFCs I have authored or closely
related topics. Remember, other standards organizations sometimes seem to
believe their standards documents are perfect, in which case no reference to
the author should ever be necessary. But the IETF expects standards, at
least at the Proposed level, to have some rough edges that are worked out in
interoperability testing...and access to an author can sometimes be a lot
more efficient than trying to sift through years of WG mailing list archives
if those archives are still available (and if they exist, since a standard
track document could have been approved without a working group).

The email, telephone, and postal information for someone change
asynchronously. Including all three maximizes the probability of being able
to contact the author. Someone in an earlier message said that listing a
residence address was "unacceptable" without giving any reason. I don't see
what the problem with that is supposed to be. I usually list my work email,
both work and home phone numbers, and my home postal address, although I am
not completely consistent about this. (I typically get about one telephone
call a year about an old RFC I authored as opposed to emails which are more
like one every 5 or 6 weeks on average.)

I don't think that any change is needed.

Donald

PS: IEEE standards have huge lists of names in them including working group
chair and officers, editor, contributors, other WG members, members of the
ballot committee that approved the standard, officers and members of the
IEEE Standards Committee, etc. But they don't have contact info for all
these people.

-----Original Message-----
From: Melinda Shore [mailto:[email-masked]]
Sent: Tuesday, March 26, 2002 3:45 PM
To: [email-masked]
Cc: [email-masked]; [email-masked]
Subject: Re: Number of authors on RFCs

At 08:00 PM 3/26/02 +0000, Sean Doran wrote:
>Stupid question: why don't we just completely anonymize all future 
>RFCs and possibly even drafts?  

I think that's a good question, actually.  Note that traditional
telecomm bodies like the ITU-T and ETSI do not typically publish
authored documents and yet maintain high levels of participation.
I'm not clear on why RFCs have author contact information in them,
and that may have something to do with whether or not it would be
possible to get rid of author information entirely.

Melinda

---

From: Ian Cooper <[email-masked]>
Date: Tue, 26 Mar 2002 14:22:20 -0800

--On Tuesday, March 26, 2002 16:26 -0500 Eastlake III Donald-LDE008 
<[email-masked]> wrote:

> asynchronously. Including all three maximizes the probability of being
> able to contact the author. Someone in an earlier message said that
> listing a residence address was "unacceptable" without giving any reason.
> I don't see what the problem with that is supposed to be.

That would be have been me, on the [email-masked] list (for anyone wondering 
why they might have missed it), and I suspect the reason it's obvious 
("unnaceptable") to me and not to you is due to cultural differences.

I don't see any reason why everyone on the Internet should be able to know 
my residential address and telephone number.  That's private information. 
If you choose to share it then that's fine - I choose to not share mine 
when possible, and I fail to see why someone reading an RFC should want to 
know my residential address.

> I don't think that any change is needed.

OK.  Hmm... I feel an April 1st draft coming on regarding standardization 
of bogus physical contact information...

---

From: Fred Baker <[email-masked]>
Date: Tue, 26 Mar 2002 15:26:01 -0800

At 02:22 PM 3/26/2002, Ian Cooper wrote:
>>Someone in an earlier message said that

for the record, I don't have a corporate address (well, I do, but it's two 
hundred miles away and doesn't successfully get mail to me), so the 
residential address is all I have that works. It's what I list.

I agree that you shouldn't be required to disclose private information. I 
don't see why I should be required not to.

---

From: Ian Cooper <[email-masked]>
Date: Tue, 26 Mar 2002 17:01:42 -0800

--On Tuesday, March 26, 2002 15:26 -0800 Fred Baker <[email-masked]> wrote:

>>> listing a residence address was "unacceptable" without giving any
>>> reason. I don't see what the problem with that is supposed to be.
>>
>> I don't see any reason why everyone on the Internet should be able to
>> know  my residential address and telephone number.  That's private
>> information.  If you choose to share it then that's fine - I choose to
>> not share mine  when possible, and I fail to see why someone reading an
>> RFC should want to  know my residential address.
>
> for the record, I don't have a corporate address (well, I do, but it's
> two hundred miles away and doesn't successfully get mail to me), so the

In which case it sounds like an English (as opposed to an RFC2119) "should" 
should replace the "must" in RFC2223(bis).

(I didn't know anyone ever actually used the physical addresses for 
RFC-related stuff any more, hence that part of my perspective.)