Proposing Status Codes

[Mark Nottingham <[e-mail]>]

One of the things that has bothered me for a while is that status codes are a scarce resource, and making a "I have an idea" proposal effectively consumes one, at least for a while.

E.g., my proposal for 430 Would Block in draft-nottingham-http-pipeline had us using 431 for Request Header Fields Too Large, even though 430 might not see the light of day.

I think we might improve this by adding something like:

"""
Proposals for new status codes that are not yet widely deployed SHOULD NOT specify a specific code until there is clear consensus to register it; instead, early drafts can use notation such as "4xx" to indicate the class of the proposed status code, without consuming one prematurely.
"""

to <https://svn.tools.ietf.org/svn/wg/httpbis/draft-ietf-httpbis/latest/p2-semantics.html#considerations.for.new.status.codes>.

Thoughts?


--
Mark Nottingham   http://www.mnot.net/