fwiw - the term "historic" relative to RFCs shows up in RFC 1083 Scott > On Dec 31, 2024, at 1:21 AM, John C Klensin <john-ietf@xxxxxxx> wrote: > > > > --On Monday, December 30, 2024 17:29 -0800 Rob Sayre > <sayrer@xxxxxxxxx> wrote: > >> John C Klensin <john-ietf@xxxxxxx> wrote: >>> But, if we have to assign a label for some reason, "UNKNOWN" >>> probably isn't automatically it because, like "HISTORIC" [...] >> >> FWIW, I like this one. I think we could say "UNKNOWN" and >> "HISTORIC" are synonyms. > > But they are not because "HISTORIC" was intentionally assigned > (although, as the IESG statement you quote more or less points out, > the particular interpretation of that RFC 2026 text used varied among > those documents. Assuming, for the list of documents identified as > Historic between the first half of 1992 (RFC 1310 -- where the > discussion and definitions in 2026 mostly come from -- and it > implies that the term was in use much earlier but I don't have time > to try to do the research) and now, that the term has the same > meaning for each would be, well, silly. > >> My context goes back pretty far (maybe 20 years), but others have a >> lot more context than that. > > Depending on how one counts, I'm pushing past 50 but, after a while, > it stops making a difference. > >> I think the question here is whether "HISTORIC" means "MONUMENTAL". >> No, it does not, in this case. We could say "CURIO", but that's not >> quite right either. >> >> One could go for terms like "ANCIENT", "ARCHAIC", or "RELIC". All >> of these denigrate the original text a little bit, so they don't >> feel right to me. I think we should refine "HISTORIC". The current >> definition is here: >> >> https://datatracker.ietf.org/doc/statement-iesg-iesg-statement-on-d >> esignating-rfcs-as-historic-20140720/ > > Actually, I'd describe that as specifying a mechanism for declaring > documents Historic and a way to better document why that was done. > The definition there is really not much better than that in RFCs > 1310/ 1602/ 2026. It seems to me that there are two additional > significant problems. > > (1) The document uses RFC 821 as an example but, as I read that part > of the description, it say that document can never be Historic as > long as SMTP is in use. At least once there is an Internet Standard > replacement, that can't be write... certainly we don't want to > encourage anyone to implement it and try to use it, it isn't current, > and it isn't recommended to use. > > (2) That document says "A document is labelled Historic when what it > describes is no longer considered current: no longer recommended for > use." But we have a very large number of documents that meet that > definition and, proportionately, almost none of them have been so > labeled. So that statement is factually false and the document is, > well, historic. > >> I think we should say that "Historic" RFCs may have been written in >> contexts we no longer have. > > Not sure what that would mean either, other than to add yet another > collection of documents that use the "Historic" term to mean > different things. > > The traditional --and most effective-- way out of this problem if > precision is needed is to define a complete new vocabulary with > precise definitions rather than trying to adapt terms that different > people will understand in different ways. Being lazy about this sort > of thing, I suggest we might use "Historic1", "Historic2", > "Historic3",..., create a glossary that defines each precisely, and > then describe "Historic" as a generic category that subsumes all of > those and maybe others and that is no longer newly applied to > individual documents. > > john > >
