Subject: [hrpc] Possible options for a HRPC research publication

From: [email-masked]
Date: Tue, 7 Apr 2020 23:24:58 -0400

Hi,

**

*Recently it has felt to me as though the HRPC RG was spinning its
wheels. Our documents aren't moving along the path to RFC very easily
and except for interesting presentations at meetings, well worth while
in themselves, we have not been making great progress with our research.*

*

Part of this comes from a disagreement about the use of RFC publishing. 
While I know it is not a requirement for the IRTF, I strongly believe
that research published as a RG RFC should have RG agreement for
publication. This does not mean that there must be agreement on all the
ideas and statements in the doc, but on the finished product. This was
the process we followed with RFC 8280 and I believe it works. A bit
cumbersome and slow at times, but it led to what I believe was a better
document. 

Not everyone, including my co-chair, agrees with this approach. To many,
the RFC series is the publication method used by the IRTF and not
everything needs to be a rough consensus document. In addition to
individual submissions, IRTF submissions are not bound by IETF rules.
They rightly ask why HRPC should be so strict when there is no
requirement to be. This question in one way or another has been asked by
several people in the RG over the last few years. The recent difficulty
has also been named as a reason for why researchers have seemed a bit
less willing to work on documents lately; what is the point if they
won't get published.

I can see this point of view, and yet, I still find myself unable to
support sending a RG document to the IRSG  that the RG does not think is
ready for publication. Of course individual submissions would be a
different matter as those do not need to be shepherded by the RG chair
in the same way.

Mallory and I have been discussing this impasse on and off for the last
two years. The last time we talked we both felt, I believe, that it was
time to try something different to break the impasse.  I made a
suggestion for working with two tracks, one the RFC track where RG
internet drafts need RG support for publication as RFCs, and the other,
the production of a yearly publication that is an edited volume that
does not require RG approval. Mallory suggested that I bring this to the
RG for discussion.

What I am suggesting for the non RFC track is that we pick a topic per
year and publish a collection of research, essays, and commentary on
that topic. How we would publish this remains to be discovered; could be
anything from a wiki site to an ebook or even finding a journal to do a
special release, if such a thing is possible. Mallory and I would act as
lead editors, but we would need to enlist help from members of the RG in
terms of putting such an effort together, as it does take work and
contributions.

In terms of topics for a first year, I have thought of two, but am not
wed to either of them at all. We would need to find a subject that
members of the RG, and hopefully others, would be willing to contribute
their writing to.

1 - Take the draft-politics as the seed and build the edition around the
various aspects of that discussion and the issues it raises.

2 - Take the HRPC core question on “whether standards and protocols can
enable, strengthen or threaten human rights” and explore the various
viewpoints on that question, including the pros, the cons and anything
in between.

This topic is on our upcoming meeting agenda, and I hope to gather some
viewpoints that will guide how we can move forward, or not as the case
may be, with the idea. Also interested in opinions on the list.

Thanks

avri

*

---

From: Mark Perkins <[email-masked]>
Date: Wed, 8 Apr 2020 20:07:52 +1100

Hi Avri

If something is published as via a 'non RFC track', eg via wiki + epub 
format, this would not preclude publishing a later edition via the  the 
'RFC track'? If so, then I propose starting with

and see how it goes. If this goes well, we could go onto your 2nd option.

However, I would not want to preclude things published via 'non RFC 
track' from being later developed into something published via RFC 
track; but more to get things moving, ensure all the discussion and 
refinement is not lost down an email black hole, and hopefully move 
things forward on the RG internet drafts side

Regards

Mark P.

Le 08/04/2020 à 14:24, [email-masked] a écrit :
> _______________________________________________
> hrpc mailing list
> [email-masked]
> https://www.irtf.org/mailman/listinfo/hrpc

-- 
L'absence de virus dans ce courrier électronique a été vérifiée par le logiciel antivirus Avast.
https://www.avast.com/antivirus

---

From: Stephen Farrell <[email-masked]>
Date: Wed, 8 Apr 2020 10:21:40 +0100

Hiya,

I like the idea of trying an "annual" (or "occasional")
publication of people's works-in-progress. Sounds a bit
like the proceedings of a workshop maybe? But however
it's cast, I'd say, yes do try it.

One other point, maybe a nit: for me, the RG can be
happy that a document is ready for publication even
if there is not consensus on all of the content of
the document. I think HRPC could do more to publish
documents in that kind of state via inclusion of some
well-written caveats/disclaimers.

Cheers,
S.

---

From: Colin Perkins <[email-masked]>
Date: Wed, 8 Apr 2020 11:06:22 +0100

Hi,

There’s a lot of flexibility in how RGs can operate, and publishing RFCs is only one option.

For RFCs, consensus documents are certainly important, and are a common way for groups to operate, but consensus is certainly not a requirement. Provided that it’s clear why a document is being published, and whose opinion it represents, a document that articulates a non-consensus view can be valuable. It might even be more valuable if published alongside a critique or discussion of the counterpoint view. The IRTF can be reasonably creative in what RFCs it publishes. 

Outside of RFCs, IRTF groups have certainly held workshops in the past, and I'd encourage such activities. The RAIM workshop <https://irtf.org/raim-2015> was a good example of this, and the IAB workshops <https://www.iab.org/activities/workshops/> are perhaps another example that might be relevant. Such workshops often publish a workshop report as an RFC, but we could also work with an appropriate academic publisher to publish archival proceedings, or simply host position papers on the website as we did with RAIM. More formal workshops associated with academic conferences work for some research groups. Perhaps working with a journal might work for HRPC? 

Also, we can certainly be more creative in hosting research group content on irtf.org <http://irtf.org/>, where it makes sense to do so. If HRPC wants to host a curated set of resources, essays, commentary, etc., then we can discuss how to do that.

Think what makes sense to advance the research of the group, and we’ll try to figure out how to support it.

Cheers,
Colin

> On 8 Apr 2020, at 10:21, Stephen Farrell <[email-masked]> wrote:
> 
> 
> Hiya,
> 
> <0x5AB2FAF17B172BEA.asc>

-- 
Colin Perkins
https://csperkins.org/

---

From: "Ciavaglia, Laurent (Nokia - FR/Paris-Saclay)" <[email-masked]>
Date: Wed, 8 Apr 2020 10:08:51 +0000

Hello,

This is an interesting approach.
I'm not commenting on the choice for the HRPC topical content, but am supportive of the idea.

We had/have similar discussion in NMRG (esp. among the chairs) about (the types of) publication of the RG collective outcome.
The IRTF RFC stream is not always the most appropriate channel (for various reasons: delay, process, or other limitations).
We don't have recent past examples, but we are aiming to publish a "paper" on Research Challenges for AI in Network Management in a journal based on the work from the RG, involving a group of authors.
For me, this would clearly be a collective outcome of the RG work.
In parallel, we will initiate a draft on the same topic, and this is part of the RG milestones.
I know this is not exactly the solution/approach you describe below, but wanted to share another, similar, possible outcome when it comes to publication of RG work.
Some scientific societies also offers special issues, editorials, and conferences/workshops reports in their proceedings.
We have done that for a NMRG workshop and conference session jointly organized with an IEEE conference, with peer-reviewed papers on the research topic of NMRG. The proceeding gathers all materials (the conference report acting as the collective outcome of the work, analysis and discussion), and the peer-reviewed publications are indexed in IEEEXplore (which is a useful incentive for academic researchers). The format was found useful and not so complicated to put in place for a good result. Such an approach offer the advantage of flexibility in topics and timely publication/availability of results.

HTH, best regards, Laurent.
p.s.: might be worth to open the discussion to the IRSG? And/or as a topic for a future IRTF Open meeting.

> -----Original Message-----
> From: hrpc <[email-masked]> On Behalf Of Stephen Farrell
> Sent: Wednesday, April 8, 2020 11:22
> To: [email-masked]; [email-masked]
> Subject: Re: [hrpc] Possible options for a HRPC research publication
> 
> 
> Hiya,
>

---

From: Niels ten Oever <[email-masked]>
Date: Wed, 8 Apr 2020 18:27:14 +0200

Dear Avri,

For me, as an active I-D author in this RG, publishing RFCs is very important. There are for me, as an academic, many other channels to publish papers and other documents (which I also do). 

The publication in the RFC-series and the connected exposure to, and interaction with, the technical community in the IRTF and IETF is for me the main reason to work and publish here. 

Best,

Niels

-- 
Niels ten Oever
Researcher and PhD Candidate
DATACTIVE Research Group
University of Amsterdam

PGP fingerprint	   2458 0B70 5C4A FD8A 9488  
                   643A 0ED8 3F3A 468A C8B3

---

From: farzaneh badii <[email-masked]>
Date: Wed, 8 Apr 2020 12:45:43 -0400

Excellent approach Avri. I think this approach could potentially reduce the
risk of the politicization of the RFC process, gives us an alternative to
discuss the topics freely without having to be concerned about reaching an
agreement or not. The approach also prevents us from diverting from RFCs
consensus based processes.

-- 
Farzaneh

---

From: Mallory Knodel <[email-masked]>
Date: Wed, 8 Apr 2020 21:23:53 -0400

HI all,

(Looping IRSG for feedback as suggested).

I have a couple of additions to what's been said already:

First I do think consensus is important, but rather as a journey than a
destination. In the various consensus driven environments that I have
participated in (for going on two decades), consensus works best when
participants are focussed on a good end result instead of the consensus,
and whether or not it's been reached.

Then again I completely agree with Colin that at times it might be a
strategic move to intentionally avoid building consensus on a draft. We
shouldn't be afraid of politicisation, but perhaps embrace it as a way to
work out the most pressing big ideas in this field and at this point in
time!

Second, and mainly, my concern has been our relevance. There isn't a
shortage of ways and means for one to publish these days. An e-book is
rather easy to generate on one's own (and here I'm going to leave aside
criticisms of the I-D generation process having myself published academic
articles with formulae, e-books, not to mention printed matter-- oh my). Or
one might have an idea for a blog post, pitch it to an already established
publication and then merely send a message to the hrpc@ list asking for
feedback on its content if one were to want to engage this
community. Upthread we have heard from published authors and academics in
HRPC saying they might have good and relevant research yet publish it
elsewhere rather than here.

I'm afraid that we are taking for granted the essential value of HRPC and
the IRTF if we are diverting work into unestablished publishing options
beyond what we do: the RFC series.

I would like to end by appreciating those who have weighed in with past
experiences of publishing beyond RFCs, which I am all for when they are fit
for purpose. As for the RG's draft-political, I'm with Mark: Let's see how
it goes as a separate edition but not preclude it from the RFC series.

-Mallory

On Wed, Apr 8, 2020 at 6:10 AM Ciavaglia, Laurent (Nokia - FR/Paris-Saclay)
<[email-masked]> wrote:

> We had/have similar discussion in NMRG (esp. among the chairs) about (the
> types of) publication of the RG collective outcome.
> The IRTF RFC stream is not always the most appropriate channel (for
> various reasons: delay, process, or other limitations).
> We don't have recent past examples, but we are aiming to publish a "paper"
> on Research Challenges for AI in Network Management in a journal based on
> the work from the RG, involving a group of authors.
> I know this is not exactly the solution/approach you describe below, but
> wanted to share another, similar, possible outcome when it comes to
> publication of RG work.
> Some scientific societies also offers special issues, editorials, and
> conferences/workshops reports in their proceedings.
> We have done that for a NMRG workshop and conference session jointly
> organized with an IEEE conference, with peer-reviewed papers on the
> research topic of NMRG. The proceeding gathers all materials (the
> conference report acting as the collective outcome of the work, analysis
> and discussion), and the peer-reviewed publications are indexed in
> IEEEXplore (which is a useful incentive for academic researchers). The
> format was found useful and not so complicated to put in place for a good
> result. Such an approach offer the advantage of flexibility in topics and
> timely publication/availability of results.
>

-- 
Mallory Knodel
CTO, Center for Democracy and Technology
gpg fingerprint :: E3EB 63E0 65A3 B240 BCD9 B071 0C32 A271 BD3C C780

---

From: Paul Wouters <[email-masked]>
Date: Thu, 9 Apr 2020 15:27:06 -0400 (EDT)

> The publication in the RFC-series and the connected exposure to, and interaction with, the technical community in the IRTF and IETF is for me the main reason to work and publish here.

I agree with Niels. Publishing an RFC is needed so that the IETF
community takes human rights considerations more seriously.

Paul

---

From: farzaneh badii <[email-masked]>
Date: Thu, 9 Apr 2020 16:09:13 -0400

Sure but not every enthusiastic academic piece qualifies as an RFC. Half
baked conceptual ideas that need years of development and their
implementation is doubtful too and there is no consensus around them should
not just be pushed through unless there are fundamental and clear
substantive changes in the document. The evolution of concepts must be
clear with strong empirical analysis. Or it has to be narrower without
grand theoretical and philosophical claims.  Otherwise publishing a piece
as RFC is merely giving lip service to human rights. I don't know how this
process is going to play out but maybe academics can layout their  concepts
and ideas in the non-RFC track and  RG can consider what needs to be
transferred to the RFC track. I think academics are in need of good
feedback to build on what they have, and the non-RFC track should include
ways to receive feedback from the IETF community so that they can improve
their pieces and be published without the rush to creating an RFC out of
every opinion and manifesto.

Farzaneh

On Thu, Apr 9, 2020 at 3:36 PM Paul Wouters <[email-masked]> wrote:

> > The publication in the RFC-series and the connected exposure to, and
> interaction with, the technical community in the IRTF and IETF is for me
> the main reason to work and publish here.
>

---

From: Niels ten Oever <[email-masked]>
Date: Thu, 09 Apr 2020 22:45:09 +0200

I actually hope many people will write Internet-Drafts about this topic. I have no problem with it if these I-Ds and RFCs would criticize each other and build on each other. I'd very much welcome an ID from Dr. Badii on the topic. Academics have sufficient venues to talk among each other on this topic, such as Giganet.

---

From: "Ciavaglia, Laurent (Nokia - FR/Paris-Saclay)" <[email-masked]>
Date: Fri, 10 Apr 2020 08:03:00 +0000

Hello,

Publishing RG outcome as a RFC is undoubtedly of great value – and we should be and make clear that different RFC "types" exists.
An (informational or experimental) RFC from the IRTF Stream, with all the good value it can have in it, is quite different from a (Standard Tracks) RFC from the IETF Stream.
An issue is that this distinction is not always known, or explicit, or obvious for non-expert.

I think the IRTF is quite clear about the RFCs published in the IRTF stream are: (extract from IRTF RFC header)
   "This document is a product of the Internet Research Task Force
   (IRTF).  The IRTF publishes the results of Internet-related research
   and development activities.  These results might not be suitable for
   deployment.  This RFC represents the consensus of the Network
   Management Research Group of the Internet Research Task Force (IRTF).
   Documents approved for publication by the IRSG are not a candidate
   for any level of Internet Standard; see Section 2 of RFC 5741<https://tools.ietf.org/html/rfc5741#section-2>."

Therefore, I think we should distinguish the goal and purpose of publishing RG results as an IRTF RFC, from other cases (i.e. IETF stream). The two documents are called RFCs but they don't bear the same significance and don't serve the same purpose.

Best regards, Laurent.

From: hrpc <[email-masked]> On Behalf Of Niels ten Oever
Sent: Thursday, April 9, 2020 22:45
To: farzaneh badii <[email-masked]>
Cc: Paul Wouters <[email-masked]>; [email-masked]
Subject: Re: [hrpc] Possible options for a HRPC research publication

I actually hope many people will write Internet-Drafts about this topic. I have no problem with it if these I-Ds and RFCs would criticize each other and build on each other. I'd very much welcome an ID from Dr. Badii on the topic. Academics have sufficient venues to talk among each other on this topic, such as Giganet.
On Apr 9, 2020, at 22:09, farzaneh badii <[email-masked]<mailto:[email-masked]>> wrote:
Sure but not every enthusiastic academic piece qualifies as an RFC. Half baked conceptual ideas that need years of development and their implementation is doubtful too and there is no consensus around them should not just be pushed through unless there are fundamental and clear substantive changes in the document. The evolution of concepts must be clear with strong empirical analysis. Or it has to be narrower without grand theoretical and philosophical claims.  Otherwise publishing a piece as RFC is merely giving lip service to human rights. I don't know how this process is going to play out but maybe academics can layout their  concepts and ideas in the non-RFC track and  RG can consider what needs to be transferred to the RFC track. I think academics are in need of good feedback to build on what they have, and the non-RFC track should include ways to receive feedback from the IETF community so that they can improve their pieces and be published without the rush to creating an RFC out of every opinion and manifesto.

Farzaneh

On Thu, Apr 9, 2020 at 3:36 PM Paul Wouters < [email-masked]<mailto:[email-masked]>> wrote:

Paul

_______________________________________________
hrpc mailing list
[email-masked]<mailto:[email-masked]>
https://www.irtf.org/mailman/listinfo/hrpc

---

From: Stephen Farrell <[email-masked]>
Date: Fri, 10 Apr 2020 10:22:01 +0100

Hiya,

I think the text below could be an example that might
mislead someone who doesn't delve into all of our
bureaucratic details:-)

>    Management Research Group of the Internet Research Task Force (IRTF).

The last sentence above is not mandatory.

Another option, from [1], is: "the views in this document
were considered controversial by the FOOBAR RG but the RG
reached a consensus that the document should still be
published".

I think hrpc in particular could benefit from using that
option. (But if the chairs don't think the RG want to do
that, that's their call, and that's fine.)

Cheers,
S.

[1] https://trac.ietf.org/trac/irtf/wiki/IRTF-RFCs

---

From: Mallory Knodel <[email-masked]>
Date: Fri, 10 Apr 2020 09:45:40 -0400

Hi Farzaneh,

By "the document" I assume you mean draft-political, to which you yourself
wrote and presented a differing view in response. Is your document still
something you think this group should attend to and work on? Was it revised
after the latest rounds of feedback in Prague and on the list? Or perhaps
it's been published elsewhere (please share link)? I'd suggest you start a
separate thread on this.

"without the rush to creating an RFC out of every opinion and manifesto."

Anyone actively participating in this group would know there has been no
rushing to anything on behalf of this research group; nor is this at all a
fair characterisation of our RG's current work items.

-Mallory

---

From: [email-masked]
Date: Fri, 10 Apr 2020 13:09:04 -0400

Hi,

This is exactly what I mean by agreement to publish without agreement on
the contents.

avri

---

From: [email-masked]
Date: Fri, 10 Apr 2020 13:13:22 -0400

Hi,

I was not thinking of curtailing RFCs, but looking for an alternate
path. I still argue for publishing any RG RFC that the RG agree to move
to RFC with independent submissions being as they have long been. No one
needs to make their doc an RG doc. I do not believe, however, that RG
submissions and independent submissions are the same or are subjected to
the same process.

But if too few are interested n the alternate path, then it wont happen.

avri

---

From: [email-masked]
Date: Fri, 10 Apr 2020 13:19:33 -0400

Hi,

Thanks for this.

Am trying to be flexible on RFCs and trying to be creative.

Basically will be willing to pass anything to the IRSG for review that
the RG agrees is ready to passed on. Will ask the question of the RG
after every drop of a ID that the authors feel might be ready.

Time will tell if anything comes of what may turn out to be workable
idea. I appreciate the offer of support if/when we figure out that we
want to do something beyond RFCs.

Thanks

avri

On 08-Apr-20 06:06, Colin Perkins wrote:
> For RFCs, consensus documents are certainly important, and are a
> common way for groups to operate, but consensus is certainly not a
> requirement. Provided that it’s clear why a document is being
> published, and whose opinion it represents, a document that
> articulates a non-consensus view can be valuable. It might even be
> more valuable if published alongside a critique or discussion of the
> counterpoint view. The IRTF can be reasonably creative in what RFCs it
> publishes. 
>
> Outside of RFCs, IRTF groups have certainly held workshops in the
> past, and I'd encourage such activities. The RAIM workshop
> <https://irtf.org/raim-2015> was a good example of this, and the IAB
> workshops <https://www.iab.org/activities/workshops/> are perhaps
> another example that might be relevant. Such workshops often publish a
> workshop report as an RFC, but we could also work with an appropriate
> academic publisher to publish archival proceedings, or simply host
> position papers on the website as we did with RAIM. More formal
> workshops associated with academic conferences work for some research
> groups. Perhaps working with a journal might work for HRPC? 
>
> Also, we can certainly be more creative in hosting research group
> content on irtf.org <http://irtf.org>, where it makes sense to do so.
> If HRPC wants to host a curated set of resources, essays, commentary,
> etc., then we can discuss how to do that.
>
>> On 8 Apr 2020, at 10:21, Stephen Farrell <[email-masked]
>> <mailto:[email-masked]>> wrote:
>>
>>
>> Hiya,
>>
>> On 08/04/2020 04:24, [email-masked] <mailto:[email-masked]> wrote:
>>> Hi,
>>>
>>> **
>>>

---

From: farzaneh badii <[email-masked]>
Date: Fri, 10 Apr 2020 13:55:17 -0400

Hi Mallory

By document I didn't really mean anything in specific just meant the
submissions to the group.
Thank you for the offer to send our work to the group for review, the
reason we haven't asked the group for comments is that we are yet to
develop it further.

We received great constructive comments during the session in Prague, last
year and thank you for the opportunity. I don't think we submitted it as an
Internet draft. And it was beneficial for us and I think the attendees
enjoyed the conversation too. I characterize the conversation as a more
collegial conversation than the community trying to prove us wrong.

I was not saying that RG functions like that (rushing to publish). The fact
that you are looking for a solution to keep submissions published but also
not characterize all of them as RFCs  or look into other kinds of RFCs and
streams attest to it. I was just trying to relay what I think the risks are
based on my very limited knowledge about the processes.

---

From: Stéphane Couture <[email-masked]>
Date: Fri, 10 Apr 2020 14:08:12 -0400

Hi all,

That is a good discussion. However, I suggest that you keep it open a bit
more as it is currently (this long weekend) a holiday for many people, and
others might want to jump in later.

Here are some inputs :

- I agree with the perspective that RFC writing should be at the core of
this research group. It is,I think, the way to go to engage with IETF
technical community and enhance the discussion about human rights and
internet protocols.

- However, if we keep a consensus-base approach, I think there is work to
be done to clarify or at least do some pedagogy about what exactly
“consensus” means in the case of HRTF. It’s one thing to get consensus from
200 people on every words of a document, and another thing to have a
consensus that the document respects our common standard of quality by
going through different editorial steps. We could decide for instance, that
if three people support the document and no one express strong opposition,
that the document is considered to reach consensus. But this is just an
example.

- However (again), if we are interested to get more involvement from
academic researchers, it is important to recognize that RFC is a weird
document, especially from a social science perspective. First, it is a
steep learning curve to ask people to use github and Markdown language to
start writing.  Second, it is difficult to categorize this research output
in our CV: while the process of RFC writing – as it is now – does require
multiple reviews and is quite demanding, it is still difficult to qualify
this document as “double blind peer reviewed article”. Personally, I
justify my contribution to RFC, not as a research output, but foremost as a
way to engage with the community which is also important, but not the same
as publishing an article.

- With all this said, I think we should also consider HRPC as a space that
has more generative potential than just RFC writing. This is already the
case : there is the hrpc website (https://hrpc.io) which includes, among
other things the short documentary “A net of rights” which is not an RFC
(and by the way, my student made a French translation of the subtitles,
which I need to share). An idea I would propose would be to make have a
blog - on this website or elsewhere - that would allows sharing less
demanding individual texts that could, in turn contribute back to RFC
writing (a kind of circularity). We could also use this site – and HRPC RG
- to promote other related projects/publications, and facilitate
collaboration.

Anyway, that’s my view based on my observations and my experience with
draft-association.

Best,

Stéphane Couture

Le ven. 10 avr. 2020, à 13 h 55, farzaneh badii <[email-masked]>
a écrit :

> develop it further..
> We received great constructive comments during the session in Prague,
> last year and thank you for the opportunity. I don't think we submitted it
> as an Internet draft. And it was beneficial for us and I think the
> attendees enjoyed the conversation too. I characterize the conversation as
> a more collegial conversation than the community trying to prove us wrong.
>
> I was not saying that RG functions like that (rushing to publish). The
> fact that you are looking for a solution to keep submissions published but
> also not characterize all of them as RFCs  or look into other kinds of RFCs
> and streams attest to it. I was just trying to relay what I think the risks
> are based on my very limited knowledge about the processes.
>
>> By "the document" I assume you mean draft-political, to which you
>> yourself wrote and presented a differing view in response. Is your document
>> still something you think this group should attend to and work on? Was it
>> revised after the latest rounds of feedback in Prague and on the list? Or
>> perhaps it's been published elsewhere (please share link)? I'd suggest you
>> start a separate thread on this.
>>

---

From: Mallory Knodel <[email-masked]>
Date: Fri, 10 Apr 2020 14:54:47 -0400

Hi all,

Just a bit of history and context, the hrpc.io website is, or should soon
be, a flat HTML site without a CRM. It was getting one update per year,
maximum, and to me that doesn't justify (vulnerable) software running on a
server. If it hasn't been done already, we could interrupt this, so that
hrpc.io could become a publishing platform (again). But historically it
hasn't been used. When it was actively publishing fresh content it wasn't
that much visited.

-M

On Fri, Apr 10, 2020 at 2:08 PM Stéphane Couture <[email-masked]>
wrote:

>>>> Sure but not every enthusiastic academic piece qualifies as an RFC.
>>>> Half baked conceptual ideas that need years of development and their

---

From: Stephane Bortzmeyer <[email-masked]>
Date: Sat, 11 Apr 2020 13:41:01 +0200

On Fri, Apr 10, 2020 at 02:08:12PM -0400,
 Stéphane Couture <[email-masked]> wrote 
 a message of 358 lines which said:

> First, it is a steep learning curve to ask people to use github and
> Markdown language to start writing.

Note that Github is not mandatory. I don't use it, for instance, for
political reasons (it is a centralized service run by Microsoft.)

> Second, it is difficult to categorize this research output in our
> CV: while the process of RFC writing – as it is now – does require
> multiple reviews and is quite demanding, it is still difficult to
> qualify this document as “double blind peer reviewed article”.

I recommend reading « Internet Requests for Comments (RFCs) as Scholarly
Publications »
<http://ccr.sigcomm.org/online/files/p31-v40n1g-carpenterA.pdf>.

---

From: Stephane Bortzmeyer <[email-masked]>
Date: Sat, 11 Apr 2020 13:45:23 +0200

On Wed, Apr 08, 2020 at 11:06:22AM +0100,
 Colin Perkins <[email-masked]> wrote 
 a message of 352 lines which said:

> we could also work with an appropriate academic publisher to publish
> archival proceedings,

A warning: many (most?) "academic publishers" actively prevent the
free distribution of the articles they publish. If the RG were to
publish anything as a group, it MUST be in a way that will allow free
redistribution (as it is the case for the RFCs, see RFC 8721.) No
Springer-Verlag or Elsevier in the loop.

---

From: Colin Perkins <[email-masked]>
Date: Sat, 11 Apr 2020 12:52:21 +0100

> On 11 Apr 2020, at 12:45, Stephane Bortzmeyer <[email-masked]> wrote:
> On Wed, Apr 08, 2020 at 11:06:22AM +0100, Colin Perkins <[email-masked]> wrote a message of 352 lines which said:
> 

I’m well aware of these issues, but thank you for the reminder.

-- 
Colin Perkins
https://csperkins.org/

---

From: Niels ten Oever <[email-masked]>
Date: Mon, 13 Apr 2020 13:06:21 +0200

Hi all,

In discussions here and on other mailinglists, some have criticized the format of I-D and RFCs, the workings of the datatracker, the slightly archaic nature of mailinglists and other tools that we use. I, however, would like to shortly note how important I-D's, RFC's, mailinglists, and the datatracker have been in my research, my involvement in this field, and how extraordinary it is that it is possible to find documents, notes, and presentations going back to 1969. While there is indeed a learning curve, the reward for traveling that curve is access to a huge wealth of highly consistent information in a very structured archive. 

In many different kinds of organizations it is hardly possible to find documents from just a few years back, let alone finding them in the same format and context. This is true for NGOs, universities, private corporations, governance bodies, and sadly also governments. 

Furthermore, RFC's for me embody a relational understanding of infrastructure that combines hardware, software, and wetware, or in the vernacular of another field: technological materiality, institutional ordering, economic drivers, and epistemic communities. For me, this is an important argument to keep on using RFCs and I-Ds (and by extension also mailinglists and the datatrackers), to keep this practice alive, by testing and expanding it with new, and sometimes relevant, contributions. 

Best,

Niels

---

From: Paul Wouters <[email-masked]>
Date: Mon, 13 Apr 2020 11:35:55 -0400 (EDT)

> In discussions here and on other mailinglists, some have criticized the format of I-D and RFCs, the workings of the datatracker, the slightly archaic nature of mailinglists and other tools that we…

Indeed! It is a very useful thing to have, although it would be nice to
get an easier overview or browing capability per WG. Navigating through
a few years of meetings link for a WG can be tedious.

> In many different kinds of organizations it is hardly possible to find documents from just a few years back, let alone finding them in the same format and context. This is true for NGOs, universiti…

I'm glad to see IETF is doing well compared to others here.

> Furthermore, RFC's for me embody a relational understanding of infrastructure that combines hardware, software, and wetware, or in the vernacular of another field: technological materiality, instit…

I ran into this myself when evaluating WireGuard. There is basically
an ever changing implementation with no history, no static reference,
a "whitepaper" that is not a specification, and an ever changing
implementation that is the only reference on how parts of the protocol
are supposed to work. It is the antithesis of protocol development.

Paul