On Wednesday, February 28, 2007 03:56:44 PM -0500 Eric Rosen
<erosen@xxxxxxxxx> wrote:
In many cases (probably the vast majority) where a document is
advancing despite a "downward normative reference", the referenced
document (and the technology described therein) is no less stable
than the referencing document, and no "caution" is required. It's
great to be able to "make a downward reference and move on", but we
should not be required to tell lies and spread FUD.
Inflammatory language aside, I agree.
Another alternative, probably a better one, is simply to annotate each
reference with its standards status, and make no editorial comment about
it at all.
This sounds like a fine approach to me, for cases where in fact no special
caution is required. For the remaining cases, someone can always object to
approving the document on the basis of an unstable downref and/or ask that
a warning be inserted. On the other hand, I don't think any change to the
document is needed to achieve this. The next two paragraphs after the one
you quote say:
The IESG may, at its discretion, specify the exact text to be used,
establish procedures regarding the text to use, or give guidance on
this text. When establishing procedures the IESG should seek
appropriate community review.
These annotations are part of the source document. If members of the
community consider either the downward reference or the annotation
text to be inappropriate, those issues can be raised at any time in
the document life cycle, just as with any other text in the document.
There is no separate review on these references.
Also, while I don't think the document necessarily needs to be changed to
REQUIRE this, I think it would be good if last call announcements continued
to call out normative downrefs, for two reasons:
(1) To make it easier to catch potentially problematic downrefs
(2) To encourage the advancement of frequently-referenced documents
along the standards track.
-- Jeff
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