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

[Daniel Kahn Gillmor <[e-mail]>]

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).

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?

     --dkg