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Miscellaneous warnings: ---------------------------------------------------------------------------- == The copyright year in the IETF Trust and authors Copyright Line does not match the current year == The document doesn't use any RFC 2119 keywords, yet seems to have RFC 2119 boilerplate text. -- The document date (December 27, 2016) is 2670 days in the past. Is this intentional? Checking references for intended status: Informational ---------------------------------------------------------------------------- No issues found here. Summary: 2 errors (**), 0 flaws (~~), 2 warnings (==), 1 comment (--). Run idnits with the --verbose option for more detailed information about the items above. -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- 2 Network Working Group Y. Sheffer 3 Internet-Draft Intuit 4 Intended status: Informational December 27, 2016 5 Expires: June 30, 2017 7 Requesting Comments: Enabling Readers to Annotate RFCs 8 draft-sheffer-ietf-rfc-annotations-01 10 Abstract 12 RFCs were initially intended as, literally, requests for comments. 13 Since then, they have turned into standards documents, with a 14 peculiar process to report errors and a highly onerous process to 15 actually have the RFC modified/republished. Non-IETF participants 16 are typically unaware of any way to provide feedback to published 17 RFCs, other than direct email to the listed authors. This is very 18 different from the way many web specifications are developed today 19 and arguably leads to the value of published RFCs diminishing over 20 time. This document proposes an experiment to remedy this situation 21 through the deployment of web annotations. 23 Status of This Memo 25 This Internet-Draft is submitted in full conformance with the 26 provisions of BCP 78 and BCP 79. 28 Internet-Drafts are working documents of the Internet Engineering 29 Task Force (IETF). Note that other groups may also distribute 30 working documents as Internet-Drafts. The list of current Internet- 31 Drafts is at http://datatracker.ietf.org/drafts/current/. 33 Internet-Drafts are draft documents valid for a maximum of six months 34 and may be updated, replaced, or obsoleted by other documents at any 35 time. It is inappropriate to use Internet-Drafts as reference 36 material or to cite them other than as "work in progress." 38 This Internet-Draft will expire on June 30, 2017. 40 Copyright Notice 42 Copyright (c) 2016 IETF Trust and the persons identified as the 43 document authors. All rights reserved. 45 This document is subject to BCP 78 and the IETF Trust's Legal 46 Provisions Relating to IETF Documents 47 (http://trustee.ietf.org/license-info) in effect on the date of 48 publication of this document. Please review these documents 49 carefully, as they describe your rights and restrictions with respect 50 to this document. Code Components extracted from this document must 51 include Simplified BSD License text as described in Section 4.e of 52 the Trust Legal Provisions and are provided without warranty as 53 described in the Simplified BSD License. 55 1. Introduction 57 IETF participants use the term "RFC" on a daily basis. We all know 58 that "RFC" stands for "Request for Comments". However the RFCs we 59 publish are anything but requests for comments. RFCs today are 60 static documents that do not invite comments. Acute readers who 61 insist on providing feedback will find the following text: 62 "Information about the current status of this document, any errata, 63 and how to provide feedback on it may be obtained at http://www.rfc- 64 editor.org/info/rfcXXXX." Once on this page, they will only find the 65 email address of a working group, which may long be defunct. 67 We can do better than that. This document proposes, as a process 68 experiment [RFC3933], to enable web annotations on published RFCs. 69 The target audience is non-IETF participants, essentially the IETF's 70 customers. We discuss the advantages of such a system and the risks 71 associated with it. 73 1.1. Conventions used in this document 75 The key words "MUST", "MUST NOT", "REQUIRED", "SHALL", "SHALL NOT", 76 "SHOULD", "SHOULD NOT", "RECOMMENDED", "MAY", and "OPTIONAL" in this 77 document are to be interpreted as described in [RFC2119]. 79 2. Overview 81 We propose to enable, for an initial period of 1 year, annotations on 82 published RFCs. Document readers will be able to attach textual 83 comments to published RFCs, and these comments will be public, 84 visible to all other readers who will also be able to respond to 85 them. 87 Specifically, we recommend using the Hypothesis 88 (https://hypothes.is/) system on our "tools" RFCs, 89 https://tools.ietf.org/html/rfcXXXX. We propose not to build any 90 custom infrastructure around this system but rather to use it as-is. 91 When the experiment is done, we will publish an experiment report 92 which will enable the IETF to decide whether this is of benefit for 93 the long term. 95 3. Advantages 97 We foresee RFC annotations being used for a variety of purposes by 98 RFC consumers, including: 100 - Providing feedback on correctness and pointing out errors. This 101 is a much easier process than submitting errata, and as such would 102 likely yield a larger number of corrections. 104 - Pointing out and even discussing implementation issues (annotation 105 systems allow a user to "reply" to another user's comments). 107 - Linking to other standards and to implementations. 109 - Proposing ideas for and initiating discussion on "next generation" 110 standards. 112 Other advantages are indirect: 114 - Improving the appearance of RFCs, bringing them more in line with 115 people's expectations of web documents. 117 - Bringing in more people into the standards discussion, and 118 eventually into the IETF. 120 4. Potential Risks 122 The following section lists some of the issues and risks associated 123 with this proposal, along with a few concrete ways to mitigate some 124 of them. 126 4.1. Annotations can be improper and abusive 128 From a legal perspective, IETF deals with user-generated content 129 continuously (Internet drafts, mailing lists, wikis), so we know how 130 to solve the problem. 132 However there can be a reputation cost, and in extreme cases people 133 may be driven away from a document because of defacement. We might 134 need to apply some after-the-fact moderation to annotations, 135 similarly to what we have now on the IETF discussion list. 137 4.2. IPR issues around annotations 139 All public annotations made on Hypothesis are licensed under the 140 Creative Commons CC0 license, which puts them explicitly in the 141 public domain. 143 See also the Hypothesis Terms of Service, https://hypothes.is/terms- 144 of-service/. Note that Hypothesis itself is a non-profit 145 organization. 147 4.3. Security and Privacy 149 Before they can annotate any pages, users need to register into 150 Hypothesis. Pseudonyms are explicitly allowed, but an email address 151 must be provided. Hypothesis does not currently support any 152 federated login such as OpenID. 154 The Hypothesis TOS declares that they do not track users of the 155 service. As far as the we have seen, they only deploy a Google 156 Analytics cookie. 158 Issue: can the GA cookie be disabled for particular URLs? 160 All traffic between the user's browser and Hypothesis is SSL- 161 protected. 163 4.4. Spam 165 So far spam has not been a problem with Hypothesis annotations, 166 because users need to demonstrate a valid email address. If it ever 167 becomes a problem, a process can be worked out where IETF volunteers 168 monitor new annotations for spam, and the Hypothesis team removes it 169 within a reasonable time. 171 4.5. Long-term retention of annotations 173 If at the end of the experiment we choose to migrate to a different 174 platform or to deploy a private copy of Hypothesis, we will be able 175 to use their documented API to retrieve any extant annotations and 176 store them into the new system. 178 4.6. What if we build it and nobody comes 180 This would constitute a failure of the experiment, but would not have 181 any other ill effects. 183 5. Proposed Technical Solution 185 Technically, to enable annotations we simply need to add one line to 186 each RFC published on the "tools" site: 188 " " 189 A bit of additional code would be needed to display the IETF Note 190 Well text if we choose to inform users that they implicitly agree to 191 it. 193 RFC authors and WG participants can be alerted whenever their 194 documents are annotated using RSS and Atom feeds such as: 195 https://hypothes.is/stream.rss?uri=https://tools.ietf.org/html/ 196 rfc1149. 198 The Hypothesis system is open source, which means that it can be 199 adopted to our needs during the experiment or later. 201 6. Trying it for Yourself 203 - Go to https://hypothes.is/, paste a link, e.g. 204 https://tools.ietf.org/html/rfc1149 and press Annotate. 206 - Now open the sidebar to view existing public annotations. 208 - Highlight some text and right-click it. You will need to sign up 209 for an account to create your own annotations. 211 7. Normative References 213 [RFC2119] Bradner, S., "Key words for use in RFCs to Indicate 214 Requirement Levels", BCP 14, RFC 2119, 215 DOI 10.17487/RFC2119, March 1997, 216 . 218 [RFC3933] Klensin, J. and S. Dawkins, "A Model for IETF Process 219 Experiments", BCP 93, RFC 3933, DOI 10.17487/RFC3933, 220 November 2004, . 222 Appendix A. Document History 224 A.1. -01 226 - Minor changes after meeting with the Hypothesis team. 228 A.2. draft-sheffer-ietf-rfc-annotations-00 230 Initial version. 232 Author's Address 234 Yaron Sheffer 235 Intuit 237 EMail: yaronf.ietf@gmail.com