Re: Cited documents, was Status of RFC 20

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

--On Tuesday, December 09, 2014 17:33 -0500 Andrew Sullivan
<[e-mail]> wrote:

> On Tue, Dec 09, 2014 at 08:45:28AM -0800, Dave Crocker wrote:
>> Well, there is certainly a higher barrier to access for a
>> paper document or one behind a paywall than there is for
>> something that is only one click away.
> 
> Yes, and a sensible author would provide the easy access
> method were it stable.  But I'm not happy about making a new
> rule or even publishing new guidance here, because this
> creates an opportunity for yet more ratholes where people have
> a fight about whether something is easy enough to get to (do
> you need to register?  Blah blah) or stable enough (is online
> the "primary" publication? &c &c).  I agree with John that
> this is making a rule where we don't need one.

To add one observation to the latter, while Heather has said
that she will (or needs to) defer to the Streams when they
specify what they want and the various incarnations of the
downref rule were established to preserve the stability and
integrity of standards-track documents, we have traditionally
left these issues up to the discretion of the RFC Editor.  There
is an underlying principle in that which is the assumption that,
at any given time and as thing evolve, the RFC Editor will have
the specialized knowledge and insight to make such decisions (or
will know where to get it and when that is necessary) and good
judgment to apply it.  

The knowledge and perspective involved is something most of us
don't have and I suggest that parts of this "cited document"
discussion illustrate that.   If the RFC Editor doesn't have the
ability to make those decisions and/or we don't trust them to do
so, then the problem would be that we have the wrong person in
those job(s) and need to fix that.

For the record, I think we have the right people in the job and
that Heather, in combination with Sandy, Alice, and the other
Production Center folks, are perfectly capable of developing
reasonable policies and evolving them as appropriate.  If we
really think that new policies are needed, what the rest of us
--including the IAB, RSOC, and IAOC-- need to do, IMO, is to ask
them to review the citation policy and then get and stay out of
their way.

     john