Re: [apps-discuss] Requirement for "obsoletes" in Abstracts

[Ned Freed <[e-mail]>]

> On 2/5/2012 4:17 PM, Ned Freed wrote:
> > There are two problems with this theory, however. The first is that separable
> > Abstracts make all sorts of sense when the full document is not readily
> > accessible (only in print journal, behind a paywall, blah blah blah.). But
> > that's not the case for RFCs. It might have made sense even for RFCs when data
> > transfer was expensive, but these days pulling out the Abstract is more trouble
> > than it's worth - why not just send the whole thing? The only remaining
> > use-case I can think would be some sort of index, and any such index done
> > competently will include much more extensive forward and backwards pointers of
> > its own. (And it is axiomatic that the far more important forward pointers,
> > that is, "this document is obsoleted/updated by RFC N", cannot possibly appear
> > in the Abstract.)

> There's a big difference between sending out a notice that includes
> one-paragraph summary (the Abstract) versus automatically including the entire
> document of 20-100 pages.

Actually, Dave, my point is that I actually disagree with this assessment. It
used to be true. Not anymore. Bandwidth being what it is, nowadays people are
lazy and just sent the whole thing. In fact people forward groups of articles
to me - sometimes very large groups - fairly regularly and of late the only
time I can recall them bothering to just send the abstract is when that's all
they have.

This is even, and perhaps especially, true when the article is a PDF. (Adobe
seems to be making it harder and harder to extract portions of the text.)
People just don't care about size any more.

> The exercise of producing a one-paragraph summary requires some discipline and
> understanding of the work that was done.  I see this as a meaningful value-add,
> over the full detail of that work which is the entire document.

I think that the abstract's value has dropped exponentially for RFCs - and I
also think it's reflected in the quality of the abstracts we see these days.
(When I-D announcements come out I increasingly find myself having to click on
the link to find out what the draft is actually about.) I also think it is a
problem not worth spending time solving, for reasons that should be obvious.

				Ned