Re: [rfc-i] Fun quizz for (*) https://www.rfc-editor.org/materials/abbrev.expansion.txt

[Jean Mahoney <[e-mail]>]

Hi Christian,

On 8/26/22 5:09 PM, Christian Huitema wrote:
>
> On 8/26/2022 12:53 PM, Jean Mahoney wrote:
>
>> Hi Donald,
>>
>> On 8/26/22 9:52 AM, Donald Eastlake wrote:
>>> Almost all standards documents vastly overuse abbreviations. I never
>>> pay any attention to the RFC Editor abbreviation list when writing
>>> drafts. The whole concept that there is some sharp cutoff with some
>>> abbreviations that everyone will know and that once an abbreviation is
>>> added to such a list it can stay there and will have a fixed meaning
>>> is absurd. Many acronyms have multiple different expansions. While I
>>> admit that I do not spell out IETF or RFC in my Internet Drafts, if an
>>> author has any doubts, they should always spell out an abbreviation on
>>> first use and/or in an acronyms/abbreviations section of their draft.
>> [JM]  It's fine for authors to expand well-known abbreviations. The 
>> RPC just checks to ensure the expansion is correct and doesn't remove 
>> the first expansion (unless using the abbreviation rather than the 
>> expansion can help clean up a title, but we'll call it out during 
>> AUTH48). 
>
>
> Jean, you mention that "some of the acronyms labeled "well-known" may 
> no longer be". That means we can have RFC published many years ago, in 
> which acronyms that used to be well-known at the time of publication 
> no longer are. That's a bit problematic, given the goal that RFCs 
> should be archived and available "forever".
>
[JM] I did have that thought. Perhaps the guidance in Section 3.6 should 
be reconsidered in rfc7322bis.

I opened an issue:
https://github.com/rfc-format/draft-flanagan-7322bis/issues/8

Thanks!
Jean

> -- Christian Huitema
>