Subject: Re: What to do with URLs in IETF docs? (was: RE: Citation bug in RFC 2425)

From: "David Mitton" <[email-masked]>
Date: Fri, 05 Nov 1999 10:32:58 -0500

I ran into a "naked" URL as a reference in someone's draft recently, and I 
don't like it at all.  I would like to insist that all references to 
include an Author, Title, and Date as minimum, then some information about 
the publication details which could include a URL.  A dead URL with no info 
on what it was, or how to maybe track down an equivalent copy is totally 
useless.

         Dave.

At 07:14 PM 10/29/99 -0500, Dawkins, Spencer (P.S.) [EXCHANGE:RICH1:2011-I] 
wrote:

>In the middle of the I-D cutoff madness last week, as I was working on the 
>references section of two I-Ds, I wondered if I was doing the right thing 
>by including URLs for my references.
>
>I'm thinking that URLs are useful in the reference sections of I-Ds. Most 
>of the references I was using were either RFCs or I-Ds that are likely to 
>become RFCs, so maybe these are OK when (if?) my I-Ds become RFCs (because 
>most of the I-D references will be RFCs by then).
>
>Most of the rest of my references were to papers from places like SIGCOMM. 
>I would like to think that including a URL for them, even in an RFC, is 
>the best I can do (of course, I don't know where these papers will be in 
>25 years, as Bob points out), even if they do move, as long as I include 
>enough bibliographic material that someone could chase my references down 
>if they HAVE moved ("Scotty?", "Aye, Captain?", "Where are the SIGCOMM 
>archives this week?").
>
>The references I was most concerned about (just to show why Bob's concerns 
>seem real to me) are e-mail postings from Van Jacobson about the early 
>days of slow start/congestion avoidance. While looking up URLs a few 
>minutes ago, I noted that the URLs that pointed to Rich Steven's home 
>page, which is where I saw them, have moved to 
><http://www.kohala.com/start/>http://www.kohala.com/start/, courtesy of 
>Gary Wright (Rich's co-author), after Rich passed away - which seems like 
>about the most unanswerable reason for a URL to become stale that *I* can 
>think of.
>
>Are there gigabytes of discussions about this topic in the archives already?
>
>Spencer
>
>-----Original Message-----
>From: [email-masked] [<mailto:[email-masked]>mailto:[email-masked]]
>Sent: Friday, October 29, 1999 6:17 PM
>To: [email-masked]; [email-masked]
>Subject: Re: Citation bug in RFC 2425
>
>
>BTW,
>
>Using a URL in a citation in an RFC seems like a bad idea.  There may
>be exceptions, e.g., an IETF.org or RFC-Editor.org URL might be less
>risky.  But expecting a URL in general to stay invariant for 25 years
>seems dubious.
>
>Bob Braden
>
>-
>This message was passed through [email-masked], which
>is a sublist of [email-masked]. Not all messages are passed.
>Decisions on what to pass are made solely by Harald Alvestrand.

---------------------------------------------------------------
David Mitton                                  ESN: 248-4570
Consulting Engineer, Nortel Networks           978-288-4570 Direct
Carrier Packet Solutions                       978-288-3030 FAX
Billerica, MA 01821                     [email-masked]

---

From: "David Mitton" <[email-masked]>
Date: Fri, 05 Nov 1999 10:32:58 -0500

Dave.

---

From: "Spencer Dawkins" <[email-masked]>
Date: Fri, 5 Nov 1999 09:36:37 -0600

Oh, yeah. I agree completely - whatever we do with a URL, it should be in
addition to relatively-normal-looking reference description (Author, Title,
Date, published-in, ISBN numbers, etc.). The URL should be a shortcut, not a
replacement.

Bare URLs are MAYBE ok in "did you see this morning's Dilbert" e-mail.
Anything else is just gross!

Spencer

-----Original Message-----
From: David Mitton [mailto:[email-masked]]
Sent: Friday, November 05, 1999 10:33 AM
To: Dawkins, Spencer [RICH1:2011-I:EXCH]; [email-masked]
Subject: Re: What to do with URLs in IETF docs? (was: RE: Citation bug
in RFC 2425)

         Dave.