Subject: Re: Proposed Elimination of Tombstone Files

From: Brian E Carpenter <[email-masked]>
Date: Wed, 01 Jun 2005 12:55:23 +0200

Thomas Narten wrote:
>>The IETF Chair is considering a proposal to eliminate tombstone 
>>files for Internet-Drafts that have expired, or that have been 
>>withdrawn or replaced.  If the proposal is approved, then 
>>tombstones would no longer be created for such documents, 
>>and existing tombstones would be deleted from the Internet-Drafts 
>>directory.  Please note that this proposal would *not* apply to 
>>tombstones that are created for Internet-Drafts when they are 
>>published as RFCs.
> 
> 
> Personally, I find tombstones for expired IDs to be useful, but only
> for a limited time, e.g., 6-12 months. I don't see value in keeping
> them around for eternity.

That seems to be the median opinion

> Tombstones are valuable for me because I mirror the ID directory, and
> I typically search my local directory when looking for IDs. It's more
> useful to find a match that indicates "an ID by this name did recently
> exist, but is now expired" then to not find a match.
> 
> I would prefer having a tombstone for 6 months to having an expired ID
> just "disappear". The tombstone itself provides an indication of when
> the document expired, which is sometimes useful to know.
> 
> 
>>Before proceeding, the IETF Chair would like to determine if 
>>tombstones continue to be of value to the community, and if 
>>there is a compelling reason to retain them.
> 
> 
> I recall there being a discussion about this some time back on (?)
> wgchairs. It would have been nice to include a summary of that
> discussion here or otherwise provide some context for why this
> proposal is being made.

There was such a discussion, which I ignored at the time, so
I can't summarize. The issues was left dangling when I took over,
and the secretariat needs to resolve it, hence the relaunch.

> 
> 
>>If you have an opinion on this issue and wish to contribute to the
>>discussion, then please send your comments to [email-masked] by
>>5:00 P.M. ET on Tuesday, May 31, 2005.
> 
> 
> I find it a bit surprising that followups/discussion of this topic are
> being directed to a (presumably) private/closed list. Indeed, I would
> have expected the ietf list to be the appropriate default for
> followups.

Since the first round of discussion was pretty inconclusive, collecting
opinions first seemed to be the right thing to do. Do you really think
we should discuss administrivia in the inboxes of everybody?

> 
> Actually, I see that wgchairs was cc'ed, so that list may be where the
> followup discussion turns out to have been held (though I think it's
> worth remembering that that is _not_ a public list, nor is it the full
> community). However, the list archive for wgchairs on ftp.ietf.org
> (and indeed the other WGs as well) appears to end at the middle of
> April.

Under investigation
> 
> Thus, I have no idea whether this topic has been beaten to death
> already and I'm just adding noise. :-(

I'd say you're reinforcing the median view. But I should indeed send
a summary to the announce list, now that the responses have largely
arrived.

     Brian

---

From: Thomas Narten <[email-masked]>
Date: Thu, 02 Jun 2005 08:44:32 -0400

> we should discuss administrivia in the inboxes of everybody?

Well, to me, it was rather unclear what the steps were actually going
to be, and who would vet the input (since feedback was asked to be
directed to an address that was apparently set up for this one issue),
and whether this was really just a proposal, or more-or-less a done
deal, etc.

And no, I certainly don't expect all adminstrivia to be discussed
publicly. But this case doesn't strike me as purely
administrivia. Indeed, the note itself seems to recognize that by
calling it a proposal and asking the community if it should go
forward.

But as a general rule, when asking the community for feedback and for
information about the impact of a proposed changed, having the
feedback be visible publically is a Good Thing. That way folk have a
sense of what is being said and whether they need to jump in with
alternate views.

Thomas

---

From: Brian E Carpenter <[email-masked]>
Date: Thu, 02 Jun 2005 17:13:16 +0200

> calling it a proposal and asking the community if it should go

Well, it seems to be an administrivium that about 30 people have
opinions about and everybody else deep sixes.
> sense of what is being said and whether they need to jump in with

Yes, but if you remember, Harald had already held a discussion on
this, that certainly didn't converge. I think the same views were expressed
that time round (although I deep sixed most of it at the time, and
I don't think it was on [email-masked] that time, either).

    Brian