Re: References to work in progress

[Thomas Narten <narten@us.ibm.com>]

> Your positions seem to be more absolutist than necessary.  A
> WIP reference actually CAN be useful, and it is hopefully not that hard to
> track down the actual I-D.  (If it's hard, there is something wrong at
> ietf.org!).

I actually find this statement interesting, because it implicitely
indicates that the intention is that WIP (i.e., to IDs) are
intended/expected to be tracked down and locatable. To me, that
implies:

- make it easier to track them down, by including the ID name

- we are kidding ourselves if we say IDs expire after 6 months and
  shouldn't be referenced. Are we trying to have it both ways?

Also, _I_ do have a hard time tracking down the references, but maybe
that's because I don't use the ietf.org search engine. Note that it
doesn't work when I'm not online, and I suspect that fewer people know
about it and/or use it regularly than you might suspect. I.e., it
might work fine for those who know about it, but this would be another
example of how one needs to know the secret IETF handshake in order to
take full advantage of things.

Thomas