Re: [xml2rfc] RFC Bibtex format doi numbering incorrect

[Matthew Kerwin <[e-mail]>]

On 30 May 2017 at 08:58, Henrik Levkowetz <[e-mail]> wrote:

> Hi John,
>
> On 2017-05-30 00:26, John R Levine wrote:
> >> Whatever was used, once you wrote the code, wouldn't it make sense to
> >> publish where/how lookups should happen?  Has this been done?
> >
> > Of course.  It's in RFC 7669.
> >
> >> And no matter how opaque the DOI series identifiers are in general,
> there's
> >> still nothing that prevents the RFC Editor from _having_ a defined
> mapping
> >> from RFC numbers to DOI and vice versa, if a decision is made that this
> >> would be helpful, right?
> >
> > No.  I really, really, wish that people would stop trying to relitigate
> > this settled fact.  We had the exact same argument before the IAB
> > published RFC 7669 which says:
>
> So you are saying that even if the RFC-Editor wished to define and publish
> an algorithmic mapping between RFC numbers and DOI identifiers, they would
> not be permitted to do so?
>
>
This whole discussion is rather absurd, and I'm a bit disappointed to see
it happening. (Not you specifically, Henrik, I'm just replying to the last
message in the thread.)

The original bug report is legitimate, and should be corrected.  I.e. the
tool that generated this document:
https://datatracker.ietf.org/doc/rfc826/bibtex/ put the wrong value in the
'doi' field.  Presumably, that tool attempted to guess the value, rather
than fetching it from a reliable source (contrary to RFC 7669, questions of
which was published first notwithstanding), and guessed wrong.  Speaking as
a general programmery type person, but not someone familiar with the tools
and resources in question, I would assume that the tool should be able to
retrieve the value for 'doi' the same way it was able to retrieve the value
for 'title', from the same or a similar source, and if it were changed to
do so the bug would be fixed.  Please correct me if that assumption is
wrong.

Now, because I enjoy a good rabbit hole as much as the next person: Henrik,
the RFC Editor can define and publish such an algorithmic mapping, of
course.  If the goal is just to document the way in which they generate
DOIs, it's potentially interesting, but not really useful to anyone outside
the editors.  If, by publishing it, the RFC Editor wishes to make it
possible for consumers to correctly "guess" a DOI, then the document would
have to update RFC 7669 (with all the process and consensus that that would
involve.)

Cheers
-- 
  Matthew Kerwin
  http://matthew.kerwin.net.au/