Top posting to note that if you find the RFC via its DOI you also get the correct status first. I think the RFC Editor has done the best they can, consistent with the policy that the bits in the canonical form of an RFC never change. Regards Brian On 15/05/2018 03:25, Spencer Dawkins at IETF wrote: > So, just to keep people at least sort of "in the loop" ... > > On Mon, May 14, 2018 at 7:55 AM, John R Levine <johnl@xxxxxxxxx> wrote: > >> When the status change document is published, the metadata for RFCs 4405, >>> 4406, and 4407 will point to the status change document, as you request >>> below. >>> >> >> The RFC production center has a database of documents that they use to >> produce the indexes and per-RFC web pages. I know something about it >> because I added DOIs to it. That database has slots for one RFC to >> obsolete or update another, which show up in those indexes and web pages. >> They don't point to the datatracker or arbitrary URLs. One of the reasons >> we have tiny historicizing RFCs like 7805 and 7142 is to leave breadcrumbs >> to the RFCs that they affect. >> >> For that reason I have a lot of sympathy for Klensin's preference for a >> small RFC that contains the paragraph from the datatracker. At a minimum, >> we should file an erratum on 6686 so it obsoletes 4405-4407 and that goes >> into the indexes and web pages. > > > Even as an AD starting his sixth year on the IESG, I didn't have a clear > picture of how visible maturity level changes are to the community, but I > have processed status change documents for some RFCs, so I went to look at > RFC 3540 (published at Experimental, but moved to Historic). > > Just based on what I'd expect to get if I googled RFC3540, I'd most likely > be looking at https://tools.ietf.org/html/rfc3540. > > That page does reflect the current Maturity level (Historic), because it > inserts dynamic metadata at the top of the first page. > > It doesn't say, on that page, how the RFC got to that Maturity level. > > If I click on [Tracker], I get https://datatracker.ietf.org/doc/rfc3540/, > which DOES say "Status changed by > status-change-ecn-signaling-with-nonces-to-historic", with a link to > https://datatracker.ietf.org/doc/status-change-ecn-signaling-with-nonces-to-historic/ > .. > > That's not great, but maybe not everyone needs to know how an RFC got to > its current Maturity level. > > Of course, if I happen to be looking at > https://www.rfc-editor.org/rfc/rfc3540.txt, I don't see any of this. The > invariant text form of the RFC would like me to believe it's still > Experimental. That's what you get from the datatracker, when you click on > "plain text". > > Clicking on "TXT" on the HTML version from the tools page gets me a > different resource, https://tools.ietf.org/rfc/rfc3540.txt, but that > resource also says "Experimental". > > I rarely go straight to the RFC Editor page (just because I spend almost > all my time on drafts that aren't RFCs yet), but if I searched for 3540 on > the RFC Editor page, I get > https://www.rfc-editor.org/search/rfc_search_detail.php?rfc=3540&pubstatus%5B%5D=Any&pub_date_type=any, > which says "Historic (changed from Experimental November 2017)", and if I > click on "November 2017", I get a pointer to > https://mailarchive.ietf.org/arch/msg/ietf-announce/NPX38P5447i8DwYN7Ijf0t0JJEQ, > the IETF-Announce "Document Action: Robust Explicit Congestion Notification > (ECN) Signaling with Nonces to Historic" e-mail. > > That e-mail does provide a link to the status change document ( > https://datatracker.ietf.org/doc/status-change-ecn-signaling-with-nonces-to-historic/ > ). > > I have opinions about all of this, and I shared them with the IESG and IAB > during our annual retreat last month, but wonder if anyone else does ... > > Spencer >
