Subject: Re: Wikipedia

From: [email-masked] (Noel Chiappa)
Date: Wed, 15 Dec 2010 12:03:57 -0500 (EST)

> From: Andrew Sullivan <[email-masked]>

    > I find it slightly astonishing that the RFC Editor's instuctions on
    > URLs don't require a visited-on parameter. Just about every academic
    > style guide requires such a note for the obvious reason that the target
    > of a URL can change. The whole reason we have the citation traditions
    > we do is so that someone can follow the reference later and look up the
    > material in question. This is an important feature of any reference,
    > because without it the citation is all but worthless: it does nobody
    > any good if you include a citation and then nobody can check whether
    > you understood (or even quoted) the material correctly.

Actually, as someone pointed out, in some sense dated URLs to Wikipedia pages
are in fact _superior_ to most other Web URL references, because in Wikipedia
you can go back into the history and see just what the page looked like when
the author visited it. And as someone else pointed out, there's a way to link
to _that specific version_. With most other web pages, there's no way to do
either one of those...

So maybe we should _encourage_ Wikipedia citations... :-)

	Noel

---

From: Andrew Sullivan <[email-masked]>
Date: Wed, 15 Dec 2010 12:08:28 -0500

On Wed, Dec 15, 2010 at 12:03:57PM -0500, Noel Chiappa wrote:

> the author visited it.

Yes, but you can only do that if (1) the author uses the
particular-version URL or (2) the author includes a visited-on note in
the citation.  It's lovely, however, that in wiki-based systems you do
have this ablity, and I agree that it'd be nice to encourage its use.

(Now I'm going to crawl back into my bibliographic maniac's hole and
stop talking about this.)

A

-- 
Andrew Sullivan
[email-masked]
Shinkuro, Inc.

---

From: Tony Hansen <[email-masked]>
Date: Wed, 15 Dec 2010 12:24:13 -0500

> have this ablity, and I agree that it'd be nice to encourage its use.

This indicates to me that the one of the checks the RFC Editor and 
possibly idnits should do is whether or not such citations have a "date 
accessed" notation.

     Tony

---

From: Dave CROCKER <[email-masked]>
Date: Wed, 15 Dec 2010 10:06:54 -0800

On 12/15/2010 9:24 AM, Tony Hansen wrote:
> This indicates to me that the one of the checks the RFC Editor and possibly
> idnits should do is whether or not such citations have a "date accessed" notation.

As already noted, there are two different semantics possible here:

1.  Latest version of ...

2.  The version as of...

We need to permit both forms, since each is appropriate for some uses.

That said, there should be clarify about /when/ each is appropriate and which 
they are not.

d/

ps.   The thread has also had different comments about whether this is something 
to be resolved by the IESG or by the RFC Editor.

pps.  The actual documentation about citation rules (References) is a bit fuzzy, 
actually, but at most the IESG can make rules for the IETF stream.  I would hope 
that basic rules are set by the RFC Editor, for all streams, with relatively 
surgical modifications and enhancements made by particular streams.  While it 
might seem reasonable to have "specification" refinement rules belong to the 
IESG, note that there are plenty of specs not on standards track and not coming 
from the IETF stream.

       As an exercise to conduct for this issue, should "downref" constraints 
pertain only to standards track or should it apply to all RFCs?  If the latter, 
what does it mean to have a downref for a document that is not on standards track?
-- 

   Dave Crocker
   Brandenburg InternetWorking
   bbiw.net