RE: broken links in W3C documents and recommendations

Pat, I think you might have misunderstood.

The domain "tools.ietf.org" hosts trials of experimental services. www.ietf.org<http://www.ietf.org>, www.rfc-editor.org<http://www.rfc-editor.org> and other sites are operational sites. It's reasonable to allow the community to try services and comment on their viability before committing to their permanent deployment.

It's unreasonable to make permanent links to experimental services.

The fact that there are some experimental services (labeled by the group experimenting with them, the volunteer 'Tools' group) shouldn't affect your expectations for permanent links to operational services.

Larry




From: www-tag-request@w3.org [mailto:www-tag-request@w3.org] On Behalf Of Pat Hayes
Sent: Thursday, February 19, 2009 9:16 AM
To: Larry Masinter
Cc: Mark Baker; Julian Reschke; noah_mendelsohn@us.ibm.com; Dan Connolly; Ray Denenberg, Library of Congress; www-tag@w3.org
Subject: Re: broken links in W3C documents and recommendations


On Feb 12, 2009, at 5:14 PM, Larry Masinter wrote:



tools.ietf.org web site is run by the IETF Tools team. See http://tools.ietf.org/about.
(FWIW I was a member of the IETF Tools team for a while.)

"The purpose of the TOOLS team is to provide IETF feedback and guidance during the development of software tools to support various parts of IETF activities."

"The team may also develop prototypes of tools on servers separate from the Secretariat servers. The team will however not be responsible for management and maintenance of such servers."

The home page notes: "Tools hosted by the secretariat are listed at http://www.ietf.org/tools"


Conclusion:

Do not treat links to tools.ietf.org as permanent links.

Then the only reasonable attitude to take would be to refuse to link to them at all, since the Web is now such that links may well outlast the things they link to, and there is nothing anyone can or should do to stop this happening. I doubt if this is what the IETF intended, however. Maybe if this policy, of refusing to create ANY links or references to ANYTHING published by IETF Tools, were widely publicised and actually adopted, IETF might re-think its antediluvian policies and smell the Web coffee.

Pat Hayes




Larry
--
http://larry.masinter.net



-----Original Message-----
From: www-tag-request@w3.org [mailto:www-tag-request@w3.org] On Behalf Of Mark Baker
Sent: Thursday, February 12, 2009 10:34 AM
To: Julian Reschke
Cc: noah_mendelsohn@us.ibm.com; Dan Connolly; Larry Masinter; Ray Denenberg, Library of Congress; www-tag@w3.org
Subject: Re: broken links in W3C documents and recommendations


On Thu, Feb 12, 2009 at 12:38 PM, Julian Reschke <julian.reschke@gmx.de> wrote:


noah_mendelsohn@us.ibm.com wrote:

...
I'm sympathetic to the notion that citations to IDs should be as "work in
progress".  I must say I don't find this an even slightly compelling excuse
as to why the content should disappear when the draft becomes obsolete.  As
a member of the community who has been repeatedly frustrated ...

I probably should have mentioned that I also think removing the content is
the right thing.

Thomas R. already pointed out that tools.ietf.org has historic drafts as
well, so my recommendation would be just to link there.

FYI, tools.ietf.org also provides "latest" links, e.g.;

http://tools.ietf.org/html/draft-eastlake-cturi

Mark.




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