Re: [Tools-discuss] missing RFC numbers: 404 vs. "was never issued"

Hi Daniel,

> On Dec 11, 2018, at 12:12 PM, Daniel Kahn Gillmor <dkg@fifthhorseman.net> wrote:
> 
> I notice that in the tools.ietf.org interface (and in the rsync'ed HTML
> data), some RFCs (like RFC 3889) say explicitly that they were never
> issued:
> 
>     https://tools.ietf.org/html/rfc3889
> 
> ("RFC 3889 was never issued.")
> 
> However, other RFCs are simply missing (they return an HTTP 404).

I believe this data comes from rfc-editor.org <http://rfc-editor.org/>.  

This page needs to be updated, but provides data regarding which RFCs were never issued: 
https://www.rfc-editor.org/never-issued/

> Some of the gaps in the RFC series are in the xx00 range -- i think
> these used to be reserved for "Internet Official Protocol Standards"
> summary documents, and some are numbered xx99, which used to be "RFC
> summary" documents, both of which are now retired. (see
> https://tools.ietf.org/html/rfc7100).  
> 
> However, there are a lot of other 404s that aren't numbered xx99 or
> xx00:
> 
>  rfc8
>  rfc9
>  rfc51
>  rfc418
>  rfc530
>  rfc598
>  rfc3333
>  rfc3350
>  rfc3907
>  rfc3908
>  rfc4232
>  rfc4658
>  rfc4751
>  rfc4921
>  rfc4922
>  rfc4989
>  rfc5108
>  rfc5312
>  rfc5313
>  rfc5314
>  rfc5315
>  rfc5319
>  rfc5809
>  rfc5821
>  rfc5822
>  rfc5823
>  rfc6019
>  rfc6102
>  rfc6103
>  rfc6523
>  rfc6524
>  rfc6634
>  rfc6966
>  rfc6995
>  rfc7327
>  rfc7907
>  rfc8389
> 
> 
> For consistency, it'd be nice if either all of these missing RFCs would
> get the "RFC XX99 was never issued" treatment; or, they could all return
> a 404.  Is there some semantic difference we should infer for one thing
> over another?

No, there is no difference.  This is on our agenda for cleanup in 2019; we intend to update the "never issued” list mentioned above and make handling uniform.  Thanks for providing the list above.

Sandy

> 
>     --dkg
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