Re: RFC Errata: when to file, and when not to

[Barry Leiba <[e-mail]>]

>
> > Of course we have mailing lists, issue trackers, and wikis, but the
> > problem is that none of them are for RFCs.
>
> In addition, those tools seem to be intended rather for IETF internal
> use than for general public.


I would say that "IETF internal use" would refer to chairs, ADs, the RFC
Editor (which is not a function that's part of the IETF, by the way), and
so on.  It's very easy for anyone, including my mother, should she want to,
to get a login to the IETF tools system.  We could perhaps make it more
obvious that one is needed, and how to do it, but I don't know that it's
any more of a hurdle than any of the 17,000 other web things that require a
"free one-time signup".

Anyway, as I said, we haven't sorted out how we would do this, and it might
be that something even easier than what we have now would be in order.


> It is /not difficult/ to find errata.  "Easy" would mean that people
> usually find them even if they're not purposely looking for them.  For
> example, the existence of an approved errata could be signaled by
> coloring the margin near the relevant text.
>

I like this idea.  Not colour, maybe -- despite the errata tool's format,
not all errata nicely fit into OLD/NEW text, and one often needs the
explanation even for those that do -- but perhaps an "errata" icon in the
margin next to the relevant text.  One could click the icon and be sent
straight to that erratum.

The trouble is that I can't see how we could do that automatically, so it
would require significant extra manual processing.  I don't have stats on
how many errata are "Verified" (and we'd only do this sort of thing for
those, I imagine), nor any real idea of how much extra work it would be for
someone to add the erratum links.  But no argument at all about how useful
it would likely be.

Barry