Subject: [rfc-i] Author line oddity in citations

From: "Eggert, Lars" <[email-masked]>
Date: Thu, 22 Jun 2017 07:53:09 +0000

Hi,

I just noticed that the author line in citations has an oddity, in the sense that the name format is "Lastname, I." for all but the last author, where it is "I. Lastname."

[RFC5681]  Allman, M., Paxson, V., and E. Blanton, "TCP Congestion
           Control", RFC 5681, DOI 10.17487/RFC5681, September 2009,
           <http://www.rfc-editor.org/info/rfc5681>.

Is this on purpose, e.g., following some common citation style? Just feels odd.

Lars
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From: Bob Hinden <[email-masked]>
Date: Thu, 22 Jun 2017 11:05:00 +0300

Lars,

> On Jun 22, 2017, at 10:53 AM, Eggert, Lars <[email-masked]> wrote:
> 
> Hi,
> 

I don’t know the reasons, but it’s been done that way for a long time.

Bob

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From: Carsten Bormann <[email-masked]>
Date: Thu, 22 Jun 2017 10:35:21 +0200

On Jun 22, 2017, at 10:05, Bob Hinden <[email-masked]> wrote:
> a long time

“Long” as in “Since RFC 753, Jon Postel, March 1979”.

Grüße, Carsten

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From: Ole Jacobsen <[email-masked]>
Date: Thu, 22 Jun 2017 08:22:24 -0700 (PDT)

The format is one of many used for citations.

Wild guess: In the early days Jon Postel worked for a time at
SRI with Jake Feinler who was a librarian by training. It may
be that she suggested this format and it stuck.

Useful tool developed by Henry: 

https://tools.ietf.org/tools/citation/

Use 1187 for your example, then change the string "{authors.rfclist}"
to "{authors.andlist}" and you'll get the more common format.

Ole

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From: "Heather Flanagan (RFC Series Editor)" <[email-masked]>
Date: Thu, 22 Jun 2017 16:20:28 -0700

> Is this on purpose, e.g., following some common citation style? Just feels odd.

Yes, on purpose. Basically follows CMOS.

-Heather

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From: Ole Jacobsen <[email-masked]>
Date: Thu, 22 Jun 2017 16:29:14 -0700 (PDT)

> Yes, on purpose. Basically follows CMOS.

That's Chicago Manual of Style (CMOS) not some transistor technology
in case you are wondering Lars :-)

Ole

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From: Elwyn Davies <[email-masked]>
Date: Fri, 23 Jun 2017 00:54:34 +0100

This is an oddity that has been brought up many times previously.  
Conclusion has always been that nobody (now) knows why we got this 
curious citation format.  One theory was that it was just a mistake in 
some early RFC which was aiming at Chicago Manual of Style citations 
that use this format:

> If there is more than one author, list the first person last name 
> first, add a comma, and then list the second person normally. Any name 
> that appears after the first name is always written first name first.
>
>     Gilbert, Sandra M., and Susan Gubar.
>
and didn't obey the "Any name ..." clause correctly.

Some heretics have claimed that St Jon made a mistake and the rest of us 
just followed the one true path.....  and references were maybe not so 
verbose back then.

AFAIK the format is unique to RFCs/Drafts.

Cheers,

Elwyn

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From: Loa Andersson <[email-masked]>
Date: Sun, 25 Jun 2017 10:56:57 +0200

Heather,

inline please.

> Yes, on purpose. Basically follows CMOS.

I've looked at CMOS, and can't find the style you are referring too, can 
you send me a link?

/Loa

-- 

Loa Andersson                        email: [email-masked]
Senior MPLS Expert                          [email-masked]
Huawei Technologies (consultant)     phone: +46 739 81 21 64
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From: Brian E Carpenter <[email-masked]>
Date: Mon, 26 Jun 2017 08:26:06 +1200

Loa,

I do wonder myself why we use this style instead of the simpler style
used by IEEE and ACM, but this goes back a long way (RFC793 for example)
so it would be a bit strange to change it now.

As for CMOS, I think it must depend on the edition. Some sources
suggest "Deans, Graeme K., Fritz Kroeger and Stefan Zeisel"
rather than "Deans, Graeme K., Kroeger, Fritz and Stefan Zeisel".

Also see http://www.press.uchicago.edu/books/turabian/turabian_citationguide.html

Regards
   Brian

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From: "Heather Flanagan (RFC Series Editor)" <[email-masked]>
Date: Tue, 27 Jun 2017 05:41:10 -0700

> so it would be a bit strange to change it now.

Also, changing it has implications for a number of tools. I'm not sure
the effort is worth it in this case (but am happy to hear other opinions).

> Also see http://www.press.uchicago.edu/books/turabian/turabian_citationguide.html

What Brian said.

-Heather

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From: Loa Andersson <[email-masked]>
Date: Wed, 28 Jun 2017 10:09:06 +0200

Heather and Brian,

> the effort is worth it in this case (but am happy to hear other opinions).

While I think the format:
"Deans, Graeme K., F. Kroeger and S. Zeisel"
would be fine for RFCs, I was more interested to know why we use the
format we use.

/Loa

--

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From: Elwyn Davies <[email-masked]>
Date: Wed, 28 Jun 2017 20:26:25 +0100

Previous attempts to find a rational explanation for the strange format 
have never identified either a formal specification of the format in 
IETF archives or any oral history of why we ended up this way.  The best 
we can do is the cock-up theory.

<nerd mode on>

Being at a bit of a loose end this afternoon, I had a ferret through the 
archives to see when this strange format first appeared.  So far I have 
tied it down (probably) to between RFC 905 (May 1984) and RFC 1145 
(February 1990).  So far RFC 1145 is the earliest RFC that has an 
example (Ref 1) of the current IETF standard that I have found. RFCs 
1146, 1158, 1160. 1161 and 1163 all have examples of the IETF format but 
interspersed are examples with the conventional Chicago Manual of Style 
(CMOS) format.     Several later RFCs around this time (RFCs 1162, 1179, 
1185 and 1203) still use CMOS.  However, there is no one consistent 
format for References sections  and various formats were used, although 
Jon Postel and Joyce Reynolds used CMOS religiously at this time.   
Official blessing of the IETF format didn't come till RFC 2223 (October 
1997) and then only implicitly - Section 9 of RFC 2223 says that its own 
reference section is 'canonical' and Ref [5] in RFC 2223 has 3 authors.

So there is still no hard evidence of how the RFC 2223 format came into 
being and why it happened other than as a mistake possibly by Craig 
Partridge in RFC 1146.

Incidentally, RFC 793 does not have any reference with more than 2 
authors and conforms to both IETF and standard CMOS  format.
<nerd mode off>

Regards,
Elwyn

On 28/06/2017 09:09, Loa Andersson wrote:
>>> Also see 
>>> http://www.press.uchicago.edu/books/turabian/turabian_citationguide.html 
>>>
>>
>> What Brian said.
>>
>> -Heather
>>
>>>
>>> Regards
>>>    Brian
>>>
>>>>>> I just noticed that the author line in citations has an oddity, 
>>>>>> in the sense that the name format is "Lastname, I." for all but 
>>>>>> the last author, where it is "I. Lastname."
>>>>>>