- From: Ned Freed <ned.freed@mrochek.com>
- Date: Tue, 11 Sep 2007 12:04:01 -0700 (PDT)
- To: Debbie Garside <debbie@ictmarketing.co.uk>
- Cc: bmanning@ISI.EDU, 'Iljitsch van Beijnum' <iljitsch@muada.com>, ietf@ietf.org, discuss@apps.ietf.org, ietf-http-wg@w3.org, saag@mit.edu, 'Alexey Melnikov' <alexey.melnikov@isode.com>, ietf-http-auth@osafoundation.org
> > `When I use a word,' Humpty Dumpty said, in rather a scornful tone, > > `it means just what I choose it to mean -- neither more nor less.' > There has been a discussion recently on LTRU as to whether a Terms and > Definitions section should be introduced within RFCs - much like those > within ISO Standards. And my response to this suggestion is the same as it was for the "IANA considerations" or "Internationalization considerations" section suggestions: By all means have a "terms and definitions" section or whatever in the document if there's a need for one, but don't make having one mandatory in all documents. We already have more than enough useless (from a technical content perspective) boilerplate in our documents. We don't need any more, and when such sections are always present but usually say "no such and such are present" they aren't helping. The last time this came up in the context of IANA considerations it was asserted that having such sections act as a useful check to make sure there are no needed definitions or considerations. The problem is people don't work this way. If the section is mandatory they'll add it when the document is first created. Sometimes they'll remember to keep it up to date and sometimes they won't. But when someone reviews the document they'll see that section and assume its presence means whatever has been checked. So the mandatory section approach can actually result in more errors and omissions, not less. It took me only a few minutes the last time we had one of these discussions to find a documentt (in the RFE Editor's queue, as I recall) where this had happened: A "there are no IANA considerations" section had been added early on but when the document acquired IANA considerations it wasn't updated. And nobody who reviewed the document caught it. Ned P.S. I've read a lot of ISO and CCITT specifications and I have found their terms and definitions material to be fairly hit or miss in terms of utility.
Received on Tuesday, 11 September 2007 19:30:15 UTC