--On Monday, 17 March, 2003 17:13 +0200 Pekka Savola
<pekkas@netcore.fi> wrote:
> On Sun, 16 Mar 2003, Pekka Savola wrote:
>> On Tue, 4 Mar 2003, The IESG wrote:
>> > The IESG has received a request to consider Instructions
>> > to Request for Comments (RFC) Authors
>> > <draft-rfc-editor-rfc2223bis-04.txt> as a BCP. This has
>> > been reviewed in the IETF but is not the product of an
>> > IETF Working Group.
>>
>> a very important thing to note
>> ------------------------------
>>
>> [10] Eastlake, D. and E. Panitz, "Reserved Top Level DNS
>> Names", RFC 2606, June 1999.
>> ==> hopefully this isn't the reference practise, should be
>> s/E. Panitz/Panitz, E./, right?
>>
>> This seems to be happening with almost all the drafts, with
>> the last of multiauthor lists, so I'm fearing a bug in the
>> tools?
>>
>> (of course, tools aren't the problem of IESG, RFC-ED etc.
>> as such, but should be noted and corrected ASAP.)
>
> After getting a few private clarifying remarks (thanks!),
> I'd like to expand this a bit.
>
> It seems this reference model is a "tradition" of a kind.
>
> However, now that the RFC-ed policies are being re-reviewed,
> it should be excellent time to fix problems, with all due
> respect.
>
> Unless, of course, there was some particular point to always
> writing the _last_ author (and that only) wrong (in the
> case that author-count > 1).
Pekka,
This is not just "a tradition", it is an approved form in some
style manuals. It is most often used along with
[AUTHyyS]-type references, where "AUTH" is two or four letters
from the first author's name, yy are a two-digit year, and S
is "a"..."z" if there are more than one reference for the same
author, or for an author with the same (last) name. One of
the controversies about the method (controversy == different
sources make different recommendations) is whether, say two
articles, one each by Joe Jones and Fred Jones, should be
cited as [JONE03a] and [JONE03b] or whether they should
preferentially appear as [JONJ03] and [JONF03].
LastName1, initials1, initials2 LastName2, ...
form is preferred to
initials1 LastName1, initials2 LastName2, ...
because it is easier for the reader to identify the author
name and match it to the above referencing variants. And
those manuals tend to prefer "Initials Lastname" (more
generally, having names appear in their natural order) in the
absence of other considerations because it is really nice to
not have ambiguity about what people are really called (those
Asian names that are normally written with the family name
first appear in natural order in that scheme, without the key
commas).
The RFC Editor's real "tradition", as I understand it, has
been to permit any reasonable reference form to be used, as
long as it is applied consistently. I am personally
sympathetic to that tradition; I think an argument for forcing
a single format should focus clearly on the method to be
chosen and why it represents an improvement. And, in doing
so, please remember those Asian and Spanish-style names.
john