Re: [Rfcplusplus] Conversation as metaphor

[Eliot Lear <[e-mail]>]

Hi Ted,

I like your metaphor of a conversation, but it seems to me that we have
to bound what we mean.  This is not a conversation between friends, nor
a @Tweet, but a very formal conversation in which a well supported
specification or point of view is articulated.  Each contribution to
that conversation, as far as RFCs are concerned, should be sufficiently
clear so as to be consumable, and each should be important, no matter
which stream they come from.

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.

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.

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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