[ih] Simple question

[Ted Faber]

On Tue, Aug 21, 2001 at 01:46:51AM +0100, Lloyd Wood wrote:
> On Mon, 20 Aug 2001, Ted Faber wrote:
> > This requirement exists (in part) to avoid the problem you started out
> > by bringing up.  An ID lasts at most 6 months to discourage people
> > from referencing them. 
> 
> The real problem with internet-drafts is that other internet-drafts
> promptly reference them. This immediately makes a mockery of that
> whole 'you can't cite me' thing by fatally undermining it.

Well, bad references in an ephemeral document are an interesting case.
Since the whole thing is a work in progress, it seems that bad
references are less of a sin.  As James 'Kibo' Parry once asked: "Can
I go to Hell for falsely claiming to be the Anti-Pope?"

I think it's reasonable that an ephemeral document's references can be
incomplete, both philosophically and as a means of bounding the
rfc-editor's workload.


> > They're less citable than e-mail.
> 
> no, because they're to an unlimited audience, whereas emails are to a
> more restricted audience (of one, even) without any established public
> temporary archival method at all.

It's reasonable to cite e-mail that you have a copy of and can
produce, the same way it's acceptable to cite an interview that only
you have a tape of.  It's never acceptable to cite an ID in a
published work.  Publically available sources are better, but it's
quite reasonable to cite non-public sources, when no public source
will do.

> > To my (limited) knowledge, this type of document is unique to (or at
> > least originated in) the Internet community.  Can anyone confirm, deny
> > or add any background?
> 
> usenet posts expire (well, they used to....) Papers referencing usenet
> posts by message-id are legion. mostly amongst sociologists discussing
> usenet behaviour, but...

Yeah, they expire, but again, one could archive them and cite them,
which I assume is what the sociologists do.  I also believe that the
expiration data for news was a matter of conserving disk space, not of
philospohically enforcing a time limit.  Expiration times weren't
uniform, for example.  I think the better analogy is that the USENET
exprration time is more like how long a newsstand keeps a magazine on
the shelf.  It can affect how easy it is to get the information in the
first place, but once you have it, it's yours forever.

> 
> and now everyone has that 'delete emails after 90 days' to avoid
> subpoenas.

Really?  No one told me...  (Hmmm, and now I'm on th epublic record
that way.)

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