Re: Making the Tao a web page

[John C Klensin <[e-mail]>]

--On Thursday, May 31, 2012 16:04 -0700 Paul Hoffman
<[e-mail]> wrote:

> On May 31, 2012, at 8:19 AM, John C Klensin wrote:
> 
>> (1) Establish the Tao as a modified Wiki, complete with live
>> HTML links to relevant documents and other relevant
>> discussions.. Provide some mechanism for comments to the
>> editor or even discussion that works better than the RFC
>> Errata process.  Turn maintenance of that page over to a
>> volunteer or two (ideally someone young enough to learn a lot
>> from the process) or the Secretariat.   Before someone says
>> "cost", please calculate the costs to the community of an
>> extended Last Call in which people debate details of wording.
>> 
>> (2) Appoint Paul as chair of an editorial committee with zero
>> or more additional members to be appointed at his discretion
>> subject to advice and consent of the IESG.  That committee
>> gets to consider whether to make changes.  If they get it
>> wrong, they are subject to the community's normal forms of
>> abuse and, in principle, appeals.  That could add a bit of
>> work for the IESG but I suggest only a bit and less than
>> running a Last Call.
>> 
>> (3) Replace/ obsolete RFC 4677 by a document modeled on RFC
>> 5000.  I.e., it should explain why we are maintaining the Tao
>> as one or more web pages and should provide a durable pointer
>> to how the web page can be found.

> Works for me, other than it should not be a "wiki". It should
> have one editor who takes proposed changes from the community
> the same way we do it now. Not all suggestions from this
> community, even from individuals in the leadership, are ones
> that should appear in such a document.

Paul, that is precisely what I meant by "modified Wiki" and the
editorial committee comment.  Note that I was not only proposing
appointing you (in recognition both of doing a good job and of
the status quo) but giving you discretion over whether you
wanted a committee.   If that wasn't clear, I apologize.  If it
is clear now (whether it was before or not), kumbayah.
 
> Simpler than the above: make it a web page (as Brian points
> out, we already have a good URL), have one editor, have one
> leadership person who approves non-trivial changes (I think
> "IETF Chair" fits here well), have a "last modified" date on
> it, and update it as needed. If there is consensus in the
> community to do this, I'm happy to take on the HTMLizing and
> skip the RFCizing for this round.

Wfm.  And also, I think, completely consistent with what I was
trying to suggest.  Make that "IETF Chair or designee" and you
are back to my editorial committee, modulo my desire to make you
the final authority unless extraordinary measures are taken
rather than adding to the required task list of the IETF Chair
or even the IESG more generally.

best,
   john