From: S Moonesamy <sm+ietf@xxxxxxxxxxxx> Sent: 18 August 2023 04:54 Hi John, At 08:25 AM 17-08-2023, John C Klensin wrote: >Of course, this interacts slightly with another active issue. I >am having visions of someone passing away and being expected by I gather that the approach at http://r.elandsys.com/r/28956 could work for U.S. residents. >the IETF to reach out from the grave to update (i.e., remove) >their email address. Given another recent experience, I have to >wonder whether the tools would then tell them that they needed >to supply a new email address, either because former authors and >contributors are required to have email addresses or because >that a working email address was needed to verify the change. The question at the beginning of the thread was about how to contact the persons listed as authors of a RFC. Is it the responsibility of the author of a RFC to ensure that his/her email address is long-lived or is it the responsibility of the RFC Editor function? <tp> Not quite The bounce message was in response to a response to an erratum and for a current AD who has changed affiliation, rather than author. Looking at the lists of addresses in the datatracker for that RFC, the address that was bounced does not appear in the 38 or so lists of address expansions associated with the RFC so my identification as an address being that of an AD is speculative; it is not an author or a current WG chair; historic WG chair perhaps? I do not know, cannot tell, How the addresses for an erratum are generated - there is no such entry in the e-mail expansions - I do not know. So it is a general problem and I see RFC authors as somewhat easier to track, e.g. after their change of affiliation, going off-grid or decease; I have seen many such searches on IETF lists, mostly successful. I think that the IETF - like any organisation - needs a process to deal with people who cannot be contacted any more but that prevention is better than cure so I wonder if the RFC Editor or such like has any such processes. Tom Petch Regards, S. Moonesamy
