BCOP appeals numbering scheme -- feedback requested

Sun Mar 15 23:14:05 UTC 2015

On Sun, Mar 15, 2015 at 11:40:27AM -0400, Lee Howard wrote:
>  
> I know, I should really be having this rant in the RFC evolution WG, or
> with the RFC editor. It just came up here, and I want BCOP to make
> different mistakes on useful documents.

Even if you suppose that the RFC series is arranged ideally, or for
that matter if you assume that, given established practice, fixing the
RFC series is impossible, that _still_ doesn't make the RFC series a
good model.

In fact, of course, the RFC series actually has an overlay on it that
is intended to be much more like BCOP, which is the BCP series.  The
thing about the BCP series is that a BCP's number doesn't change even
if the document(s) making it up do.  That's why (say) BCP 9 is the
Internet standards process regardless of whether that's RFC 1602 or
2026-and-updates or whatever.

I think that sort of thing is useful, because people can learn the
right shorthand for "whatever one is doing now on topic X" and just
refer people to that.  I don't care if it's "BCOP 32006.1234" or "BCOP
on foobar of whazit", but a consistent reference people can go to for
the current version is the important feature.  

I also think that trying to pack more bits of information into the
numbering system is a mistake.  But then, I would.  I think you look
those sorts of things up (in the DNS, of course ;-) )

A

-- 
Andrew Sullivan
Dyn
asullivan at dyn.com