[rfc-i] RFC citations committee I-D issued

[Joe Touch]

Hi, Brian,

On 2/10/2011 2:16 PM, Brian E Carpenter wrote:
...
>> I think MAY is OK (for the filename), but SHOULD isn't, for that reason.
>> It gives a misimpression of publication; again, the point is to cite for
>> credit only.
>
> Not so, if you actually want to discuss the details of a versioned draft.

IMO, it's incumbent on the author to include enough context for that 
discussion, not just to cite off to a doc that may be gone. Keep in mind 
that not all IDs are archived by the ISOC, and not all ever appeared on 
the web, yet there are many which are still cited to give credit for an 
idea.

Overall, it's dangerous to cite something that can disappear (except as 
credit) - esp. if it's intended to disappear.

> This is not theory. Paul Hoffman has an example, and so do I:
> draft-hu-flow-label-cases cites
>
>     [34]  Winter, T. and P. Thubert, "RPL: IPv6 Routing Protocol for Low
>           power and Lossy Networks", draft-ietf-roll-rpl-07 (work in
>           progress), March 2010.
>
>     [35]  Winter, T., Thubert, P., and R. Team, "RPL: IPv6 Routing
>           Protocol for Low power and Lossy Networks",
>           draft-ietf-roll-rpl-11 (work in progress), July 2010.
>
> because they are different in a crucial respect (one proposes to
> use the flow label and the other one doesn't).

In this case, the date gets you the difference anyway. I'd say "MAY 
include the filename in general, SHOULD include the filename if there 
are multiple versions for a given date)

Joe