Subject: XML, etc

From: Bob Braden <[email-masked]>
Date: Tue, 27 Feb 2001 16:54:02 GMT

*> 
  *> The other thing that would be nice is a way of getting all of the
  *> authors current contact info in one place and up to date. 
  *> 
  *> -MM
  *> 

If you have a good idea on how to keep contact information
up to date, the RFC Editor would like to know.

Bob Braden

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From: Michael Mealling <[email-masked]>
Date: Tue, 27 Feb 2001 11:52:08 -0500

> up to date, the RFC Editor would like to know.

;-) Point taken! ;-)

I wasn't actually suggesting the secretariat or the RFC Editor attempt
to keep it up to date. Instead just pull it out into a seperate, referenceable
section much the way Marshall has done with the bibliography. People
tend to do at least a little bit better job of maintaining their contact
information when they know its going to be used....

-MM

-- 
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Michael Mealling	|      Vote Libertarian!       | www.rwhois.net/michael
Sr. Research Engineer   |   www.ga.lp.org/gwinnett     | ICQ#:         14198821
Network Solutions	|          www.lp.org          |  [email-masked]

---

From: [email-masked]
Date: Tue, 27 Feb 2001 12:12:03 -0500

> up to date, the RFC Editor would like to know.

Particularly for the "RFCs are cast-in-stone" Authors field. which
has this annoying tendency to list the E-mail address of the author
at the time of RFC publication.

Marshall - I know you're out there.  How many preferred e-mail addresses
have you gone through since RFC886 came out in Dec 1983? ;)

For bonus points, Marshall's address in RFC886 is listed as:

MRose.UCI@Rand-Relay

Gaak.  Bit Rot. ;)
-- 
				Valdis Kletnieks
				Operating Systems Analyst
				Virginia Tech

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From: "Henning G. Schulzrinne" <[email-masked]>
Date: Tue, 27 Feb 2001 14:59:16 -0500

> up to date, the RFC Editor would like to know.

While perfection is unachievable (after all, eventually all contact
information will be out of date as the authors move on to a different
addressing space), I believe we can do somewhat better than today. There
used to be a handle system that assigned unique identifiers to people. A
separate database (call it "whois" or "LDAP" or whatever) then tracks
the current location. If you want to get fancy, have a ping mechanism
that sends email to each author periodically (once a year, say), as that
at least increases the chance of catching somebody as their old address
is still reachable.

(FWIW, I do something similar for conference paper management in EDAS,
where authors and reviewers get assigned a unique and random 32-bit
identifier. They keep the identifier even as their contact information
or even name changes.)

-- 
Henning Schulzrinne   http://www.cs.columbia.edu/~hgs