Re: A perspective on the FYI RFC Publication Process

[April Marine <[e-mail]>]

I'm a bit late in throwing 2 cents in here, but since my comment is not
time-dependant perhaps that won't matter.

I was happy to see this comment on the FYIs as it gives me a chance to
address a very common misunderstanding about these docs.  Rarely do I get
such a good excuse to expound to the whole list!

> draft-ietf-uswg-fyi4-00.txt
> ? These do look quite similar to trade rag intros-to-the-internet to
> me. (How many new users will begin by reading RFCs? How quickly will
> this material date? hint: Floppy Drives are mentioned, and half the
> URLs in 2150 are broken already; that should have been issued as
> historic.) 
> 

(Actually, the comment refers to the ID mentioned and to RFC 2150 as
examples.)

First, most FYIs come from the User Services Area.  We are painfully aware
that users don't really read RFCs.  The USV area actually tries to play to
an audience of those who support users.  In other words, it's more of a
second-level support service (if "service" is the right term).   Many FYIs
were written so that user support services could have "authoritative"
documentation that they could freely distribute or re-use, lessening the
amount of repetitive work we all have to do.

Second, how quickly will this material date?  Too darn quickly!
Technically, USV is supposed to keep updating the FYI documents.  FYI 4,
for example, has been published about 3 times already and there is a new
draft of it.  FYI 4 is a new user document and we had long discussions
about whether or not we should go to the effort of updating it given
that, as is mentioned, there are SO many other intro docs more readily
available.  The reason we finally decided to go ahead and iterate it was
because we still get requests to reprint the RFC!  There are people around
the world who find these documents useful and we have to keep in mind that
the IETF has a worldwide audience.  Since there is a "market" for the
document, we felt obligated to make sure the information was as accurate
as we could make it today.

Finally, USV considers itself at a transition point.  Nobody wants to
waste time (volunteer time, I might add) writing docs no one will read or
that will go out of date yesterday.  We are currently writing one document
to list all the FYI RFCs that we consider both out of date and not worth
updating.  (This is to let people know that we ourselves are aware that
some info is not worthwhile using at this point.) See
draft-ietf-uswg-historic-00.txt, although I don't think that list will be
the final final one.

FYIs were conceived as "living documents" before the Web was prevalent.
Given new tools today, we are working toward updating our approach to what
information we support and how we publish it.  

And we *always* appreciate help! :-)

regards,
April Marine

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