On Sep 17, 2011, at 5:37 PM, Yaron Sheffer wrote:
> Like Keith, I believe we can benefit a lot from users being able to freely annotate RFCs with implementation notes, corrections and even opinions ("this protocol option sucks!").
>
> But I also tend to agree with Joel that the wiki format is inappropriate for this purpose, because if people are allowed to change one other's comments, we are very likely to repeat the WG discussion, but without the processes and incentives that enable us to eventually achieve consensus. So I am not as optimistic as Keith about the wiki format leading to a status quo. The same people who would argue their point forever on a mailing list would just keep editing and re-editing the wiki page.
Maybe a workable compromise would be to let people re-edit their previous contributions. Though I'm also about the tendency for large numbers of people to submit irrelevant material. I think that some sort of moderation might be in order, which begs the question - who should do the moderation? Slashdot-style moderation, at least, doesn't seem to work well - it favors those who comment early rather than those who submit the best comments. What you want to do is favor the contributions that summarize an issue and/or its resolution fairly, clearly, and succinctly; and then make the set of comments that do this, and cover the more important issues associated with an RFC, the ones that are the most visible.
> I think the Annotated CPAN example ( http://www.annocpan.org/) is near perfect for our needs:
>
> - The main text is visually distinguished from the annotations.
> - Annotations are visually near the relevant text, rather than appended at the end.
> - The main text cannot be changed.
> - Annotations can be freely added by anybody, it is trivial to open an account.
> - Users are identified but with no strong authentication.
> - One user can comment on another user's comment, but cannot change it.
> - There is some moderation behind the scenes (I haven't studied it, but it's essential in order to avoid spam).
> - There's an average of 1-2 comments a day, so a small number of moderators can handle the traffic.
As a starting point, this might not be too bad, especially if the code is available and can be adapted (even if it is written in Perl, sigh). Though I think that anything of this nature is going to have to adapt over time as experience with it is gained.
Keith
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