Re: Call for review of proposed update to ID-Checklist

Dear IESG,

> From the discussion just prior to the recent appeal by John Klensin, it
> was clear that the guidance regarding example domain names in IETF
> documents provided in the ID-Checklist needed to be updated.  This point
> was emphasized further during the discussion of the Klensin appeal.
> Proposed text is now available.  Many thanks to Bert Wijnen for continuing
> to edit the document.
>
> The IESG solicits comments on this proposed update.  The IESG plans to
> make a decision on this proposed text on 2008-07-17.  Please send
> substantive comments to the ietf@ietf.org mailing lists by 2008-07-16.
> Exceptionally, comments may be sent to iesg@ietf.org instead.  In either
> case, please retain the beginning of the Subject line to allow automated
> sorting.

I agree with moving the 2606 check to "SHOULD".

It is often helpful to provide guidance about when SHOULDs might not be 
appropriate, when we have at least some experience where this is the case.

Were I to propose text, I think we have some experience that's popped up 
during the appeal discussion, as follows:

Addresses used in examples SHOULD use fully qualified domain names instead 
of literal IP addresses, and SHOULD use example fqdn's such as 
foo.example.com instead of real-world fqdn's. See [RFC2606] (Eastlake, D. 
and A. Panitz, "Reserved Top Level DNS Names," June 1999.) for example 
domain names that can be used.

The use of reserved example FQDNs, IP addresses or network prefixes may not 
be appropriate in all cases, including these (which have come up in 
practice):

o If an example describes a complex network topology, it could be 
appropriate to use a variety of names, IP addresses or prefixes that are 
easily disambiguated, so that the reader might follow the example more 
easily.

o If a standards-track document that does not use example names is 
advancing, it could be appropriate to minimize text changes as the document 
advances (the names used in the document have already been published, so the 
question should be whether there is additional damage that would result from 
the second publication on the standards track).

Thanks,

Spencer 

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