Re: [Rfcplusplus] Conversation as metaphor

[Eric Rescorla <[e-mail]>]

On Tue, Jul 10, 2018 at 10:13 AM, Ted Hardie <[e-mail]> wrote:

> On Mon, Jul 9, 2018 at 2:14 PM, Eliot Lear <[e-mail]> wrote:
>
>> As to voices, one of the perhaps lost aspects of RFCs is that Jon always
>> encouraged dissenting views on important topics to be published, so long as
>> they were well reasoned and reasonably well written.  Personally I'd like
>> to see more dissenting views coming out of independent submissions.  I know
>> I have quite a few to share ;-)  I offer that only in as much as having a
>> few dissenting views might make clear that we really do speak with multiple
>> voices.
>>
> I personally don't think the dissenting opinions are fewer now, but fewer
> of them are expressed in RFCs.  The critiques and dissents come, as Eric
> mentioned, in other series or other forms.
>

It's perhaps worthwhile to distinguish between a number of different types
of this kind of meta-RFC material. Here's a non-exhaustive list

- Alternate proposals that didn't get accepted
- "Inside" critiques (some of the examples Eliot gave)
- "Outside" critiques
- Academic papers on a given protocol (e.g., the examples I gave for TLS
1.3)

In my experience, the first two of these often get published as RFCs, but
sometimes don't (though not always, see
https://hueniverse.com/oauth-2-0-and-the-road-to-hell-8eec45921529)
Conversely the last two almost never appear as RFCs. Critiques are
typically blog posts, twitter, etc., with academic papers appearing in
journals, conferences, etc.

-Ekr


> Anyway, I won't be in Montreal, so here's my own bottom line:  if the IAB
>> are serious about actually using different labels, ask yourselves what the
>> plan is to make those new series successful.  How will the new series be
>> promoted?  What will you attract readership?  And what will the rules of
>> the road be for the series?  If you do not have a plan, then let's not be
>> under any illusions that the new series will be successful.
>>
>> I think you're quite right that making a successful change of this type
> will take work, and that promoting the output of the different streams will
> be part of that work.  What's been interesting for me is that the thought
> of how different the audiences are for that promotion.  Reaching the folks
> who need to understand what the IRTF's output is and means is a very
> different enterprise than reaching those who might need to understand what
> the Internet Architecture Board has to say.  Given the acronym overload
> there, a portion of that has to be making sure which IAB is talking, an
> impact that the IAB or ISE would not feel.    But I think that actually
> illustrates the problem folks have brought forward here:  if we were
> promoting these voices, we would do so at least partly to very different
> audiences.  That's may be an important signal.
>
> Ted
>
>
>
>> Eliot
>>
>> On 09.07.18 17:24, Ted Hardie wrote:
>>
>> In a different thread, Eric made a statement about the RFC Series being
>> in conversation with other publications:
>>
>> The RFC series (and also I-Ds) have an important role to play here, but
>>> it also exists in conversation with a lot of other publication venues, and
>>> I think that's healthy.
>>>
>>
>> While I agree with him, I think the metaphor of "conversation" is even
>> more useful in describing both the current series and the question before
>> us.  From my personal perspective, the primary reason we use "RFC" as a
>> series identifier is to identify a specific set of technical documents as
>> part of a common "conversation".  The adoption of the term and series by
>> the IETF was a signal about the conversation their documents were to be
>> part of; choosing a different document  series (like ANSI, ISO, or minting
>> a new one) would have sent a signal about a different technical community
>> with whom the IETF was in dialog.
>>
>> When the idea of different streams and stream managers gelled, we kept
>> the same series identifier for all of them.  I think, personally, we did
>> that because we wanted to be clear that all of the documents continued to
>> be part of a larger conversation about the development of Internet
>> technologies.
>>
>> One way to understand the problem motivating this BoF is also through the
>> metaphor of conversation: many outside the community simply don't recognize
>> that there are multiple voices inside that conversation.  They see all of
>> the documents as utterances by a single, somewhat nebulous group.  That can
>> cause problems.  Among those named earlier were the academic community's
>> failure to value the output of the IRTF; vendors or customers not
>> distinguishing consensus output from proprietary alternatives; and even a
>> few efforts to get rejected ideas to appear to have been accepted ones.
>>
>> The question before us could be cast as:  is it more important now to
>> highlight the different voices that the streams and statuses currently
>> convey, so that others understand them as disctinct?
>>
>> As Eric points out, there are other ways to maintain a conversation among
>> different groups than to make their output part of a single series.  There
>> are also other ways we could try to make sure that we highlight that
>> distinction more fully (using STD numbers for all IETF standards documents,
>> for example, from proposed standard onward).  But I think this is the core
>> of the tension, shorn of discussion of brand or history:  how to we get to
>> the right balance of maintaining the conversation while improving the
>> understanding that these are individual voices within it?
>>
>> My thoughts as individual,
>>
>> regards,
>>
>> Ted
>>
>>
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