top | item 27337362

(no title)

I tried one of the example queries, "UDP".

Out of the 45 search results, the most relevant one (the UDP RFC itself) was all the way at the bottom, listed as "RFC0768" and tagged as "legacy". (I'm not sure what legacy actually means here?)

Anyway, I clicked the link, which took me to a 404 error page - https://www.rfc-editor.org/rfc/rfc0768.html (The correct URL is apparently without the leading 0)

This site does seem genuinely useful, but I think the UX could really use some polishing here, especially since I literally followed through with one of the example queries in the middle of the homepage.

discuss

tialaramex|4 years ago

"Legacy" here means that it (substantially) pre-dates the IETF deciding it needs the arrangement described in RFC 4844

Today a document like RFC 768 would most likely be the product of an IETF Working Group (possibly after being initially drafted outside and then adopted). In some cases an Area Director might authorise somebody to write a document without the Working Group process under their direct sponsorship instead. Together these form the IETF stream. This stream is the only means by which the IETF produces "standards track" documents, although it can also produce other documents from this stream.

Two other related groups, the IAB and IRTF, might create documents the RFC Editor cares about, they have their own streams. For example RFC 4844 is from the IAB stream.

Finally there are Individual Submissions. Sometimes these are documents nobody in any Working Group or Area cares about, occasionally they are documents a Working Group abandoned because it was unable to reach consensus and those who favoured the document finished it up as an Individual Submission. In some cases they're documenting a thing the authors would like to be public, just to get it down on paper.

The "Legacy" indication just means RFC 768 is too old to be classified by stream, the whole idea didn't exist back then.

dolmen|4 years ago

So for most viewers of the site (who don't know and don't care about the IETF process), "legacy" is just misleading as it doesn't have the meaning they expect.

Serious UX work needed.

mnot|4 years ago

Now sorted in order of # of citations within the RFC corpus; it's rough, but definitely more usable IMO. Thanks for the suggestion.

Retr0spectrum|4 years ago

I think that's a big improvement, thanks!

mnot|4 years ago

The leading '0' issue should be fixed; not sure why that happened, it was tested before.

WRT UX - yes, it certainly could be improved. Issues and PRs gladly accepted :)