[rfc-i] citing historic internet drafts

[Joe Touch]

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Andrew G. Malis wrote:
>> An aside: the cases that Julian cites for wanting more explicit
>> references to Internet Drafts could be handled another way:  simply
>> publish the Drafts as RFCs and reference them as RFCs.  Not all RFCs
>> are standards track, and in fact the independent submission stream is
>> often used to publish documents that WGs have considered and for some
>> reason did not pursue, but which were thought to be of some historic
>> interest.
> 
> The counterpoint to this proposal is that there are cases when drafts,
> individual or other, are purposefully not published as RFCs, such as
> they are redundant to (or actively oppose) an existing standards-track
> RFC, they are considered by a WG that is directly germane to the draft
> and the WG decides that the draft should not become a WG work item, or
> the IESG or RFC editor has previously reviewed the draft and decided
> that it does not have minimal quality to be published (such as a
> series of drafts I recall from the past on number theory).

Not all documents are owned by WGs either - either because the intended
WG declined to pursue them, or because the document simply isn't
intended for a WG.

It's worth keeping in mind that IDs expire exactly to encourage
preliminary ideas, some of which can be abandoned. That ultimately is
the authors' choice.

Joe
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