RE: [newtrk] draft-rousskov-newtrk-id-state-00

[Larry Masinter <[e-mail]>]

I don't think you have summarized my position; I think that
formalizing and encouraging the declaration of the state
of a draft in the draft itself (rather than a pointer
to where this could be found) is a bad idea. 

If it were the case that the state of the draft was
always known at time of publication of the draft, it
would be different.

Consider 'writers' and 'readers', in two cases:

1. In cases where the state of the draft changes after the draft
comes out, putting the state in the draft itself is counter-productive;
it was unnecessary work for writers and is potentially
confusing to readers. This is especially troubling when
disagreement appears after it seemed as if there was consensus.

2. In cases where the state is known before the draft is published,
it still adds work for writers and has marginal utility for
readers, since the readers still have to go to some
web page to see whether the state has changed since the draft
was published.

Futher, consider how adding this section will change people's
behavior:

I think it would encourage people to delay publishing drafts
until the state is 'known'. But the best way to decide
on the state is to publish the draft and ask people
to review the actual document, instead of talking about
abstract points that don't actually appear in the document.

It's been my experience that convergence on status only
comes after there is an actual draft that contains the
text that you think there was agreement on a particular
point, and people are able to read the text in context.

So I think it's counter-productive to encourage people to
put the status in the drafts.

Larry

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