Subject: Re: Number of authors on RFCs

From: Danny McPherson <[email-masked]>
Date: Tue, 26 Mar 2002 08:59:12 -0700

I'd prefer this model as well, or perhaps the slight 
variation that Ran proposes.  And rather than just a 
matter of AD preferences or recommendations, it should
probably be required.

-danny

> 
> I'm sure that #3 is the problem. You can feel free to list all of the 
> authors in the acknowledgements section, even separating them out as 
> the main authors with grand fanfare and noting the rest of the 
> contributors in a list below them. Something like:
> -----
> Acknowledgements
> 
> Although Jane Smith served as the editor of this document, the 
> substance of the document was written by the following ten co-authors 
> who each contributed significant amounts of text to the document:
> 
> John Jones, ABC Corporation
> 
> Mary Black, XYZ University
> 
> ...
> 
> Jerry Johns, 123 Inc.
> 
> The editor and the authors would also like to thank the following 
> members of the NUTS working group for all of their commentary and 
> contributions to the document:
> 
> Andy Anderson, Bertha Brown, Charles Carson, .....
> -----
> 
> Nothing stops you from formatting the acknowledgements however you 
> like. The problem is that the author section refers to who is on the 
> top of the page and indicates the point of contact for the document.
> 
> Change #3 to "List all of the authors with special note in the 
> acknowledgements section" and you should be fine.
> 
> pr
> -- 
> Pete Resnick <mailto:[email-masked]>
> QUALCOMM Incorporated - Direct phone: (858)651-4478, Fax: (858)651-1102

---

From: "Kurt D. Zeilenga" <[email-masked]>
Date: Tue, 26 Mar 2002 08:49:52 -0800

>matter of AD preferences or recommendations, it should

I concur.  I feel that the policy should be:
  1) the document editor listed on title page, and
  2) acknowledgement section used to provide author attribution.

I've cc'ed the RFC Editor on this as these comment are
relevant to their recent proposals.

I also recommend where the document editor is working
under the auspices of a WG, that it be that working group
name listed as their "company".

Kurt

---

From: Ian Cooper <[email-masked]>
Date: Tue, 26 Mar 2002 08:46:38 -0800

> matter of AD preferences or recommendations, it should

This is kind-of addressed in section 2.12 of
  draft-rfc-editor-rfc2223bis-00.txt

   2.12 Author Lists

      Long lists of authors are not generally acceptable on RFCs.  While
      there may be occasional exceptions, in general the person (or the
      few people) who WROTE the document should be listed as the
      author(s).  Others who contributed to developing the specification
      may be listed in an Acknowledgment section.  Even when there are a
      number of significant contributors, there is usually a single
      person tasked with integrating the results into a single document;
      that person may be listed as "Editor", with acknowledgments for
      the other contributors.

      Objections to huge author lists are both practical and
      ideological.  The practical issues have to do with the long-
      existing RFC formatting conventions that do not comfortably handle
      large author lists.  Ideological objections stem from the Internet
      community's tradition of individual rather than corporate action
      and responsibility.  Some might see a list of 17 authors on one
      RFC as motivated by a desire for corporate name-dropping, which
      would be inappropriate in the IETF/RFC context.  If there is a
      desire to demonstrate how many companies are interested in this
      spec, a simple acknowledgment section can accomplish the same
      goal, without Author Overload.

Since the RFC-Editor has a draft in which it might be possible to "lay down 
the law" I wonder if it might be a good idea to move this discussion to the 
main IETF list?