Talk:Request for Comments

message: I found this in the German Wikipedia. Maybe someone could add a description. Don't know how to describe it in english.
I hope it's not counted as an advertisment. I'm not a supportor or afflite of this (yet), but it sounds interesting to me.
The link is: http://www.rfc-ignorant.org/  —Preceding unsigned comment added by 85.127.102.162 (talk) 21:30, 29 November 2007 (UTC)
thread_title: RFC-Ignorant

message: I don't understand why people keep removing the link to Wikipedia:Request for comments.  It is very apropos and useful here.  By comparison, VfD redirects to Wikipedia:Votes for deletion, Rfa redirects to Wikipedia:Requests for adminship, and so on; is it that unreasonable that RFC and Request for Comments should provide at least a link to the W:RfC page?  Someone could well be seeking that page here.  Also, cf. VFD. -- VV 23:50, 4 Apr 2004 (UTC)
thread_title: Wikipedia:Request for comments link

message: I find it somewhat amusing that RFC 3092 (Etymology of "Foo") is listed among the most important RFCs... :) Fredrik 20:34, 7 Apr 2004 (UTC)
thread_title: Etymology of "Foo"

message: Are three-digit RFCs supposed to be listed as RFC 0123 or as RFC 123? Both exist on the page. It's fine to do it either way, but some standard should be settled on. I vote for the second way, dropping the leading zero. Grendelkhan 03:05, 2004 Apr 20 (UTC)
:Another vote for dropping the leading zero. There are no leading zeros in the RFCs themselves. —Bkell 06:23, 21 Apr 2004 (UTC)
replies: text: ++dropping Guaka 22:25, 23 Apr 2004 (UTC)
thread_title: Three-digit RFC numbers

message: RFC 439 seems like a joke to me. But it dates January 21... Guaka 22:25, 23 Apr 2004 (UTC)
replies: text: I don't think it's a joke; it appears to be an actual conversation between two artificial intelligence systems. Granted, it's entirely for entertainment value, but there's no restrictions on what RFCs can and cannot contain. —Bkell 05:56, 25 Apr 2004 (UTC)

text: Yes, it is real - the two programs (Parry and the Doctor) really existed, and this is (AFAIK) what they really "said" to each other when hooked together. (I seem to recall that this was actually printed in Datamation, back when it was done.) Things weren't as formal that far back in time, and so you could get this kind of thing on dates other than April 1, something that might not happen now. Noel (talk) 02:23, 6 Dec 2004 (UTC)
thread_title: Joke RFC?

message: I wikified the RFC links (i.e., prefer RFC 1234 = RFC 1234 to RFC 1234 = RFC 1234) and added all the information to a table, which I feel is the proper way to present data repeated in a regular format.  --Ardonik.talk() 02:09, Sep 5, 2004 (UTC)
: Wouldn't it be better if RFC was wikified to Request for Comments, and the RFC number to the RFC text at ietf.org ? So readers could read general info on RFCs in the article. Apokrif 21:47, 4 May 2006 (UTC)
thread_title: Added table and wikified

message: Perhaps someone should write why it's called Request for Comments, I have no idea, fo  me it's a strange way to define a standard to calle it rfc. -- AzaToth 11:58, 3 Nov 2004 (UTC)
replies: text: History, basically. Back in the days of RFC 1, it was just some notes being passed back and forth among a small group of researchers. It has gradually become a lot more formal, but the name remains the same, mostly because it would be too confusing to change it. There are additional series now, STD and BCP, but RFC remains the one everyone knows. Noel (talk) 23:20, 15 Nov 2004 (UTC)

text: I've recently edited the article, I will add this in now (I imagine other people might want to know too). Noel (talk) 02:23, 6 Dec 2004 (UTC)
thread_title: Origin of the name

message: Why a list of "random RFCs"? Maybe "Key RFCs", or "Importent RFCs"?
~ mlk ✉♬ 03:19, 30 Dec 2004 (UTC)
thread_title:  Random RFCs? 

message: The list of "important RFC's" is still really long, and now that each entry links to the actual RFC, has much duplication with the later lengthy list of RFC's at the end of the article. I don't have the energy to do much about this at this point - I just spent a couple of hours going through the list of "important RFC's" and trying to weed out the obsolete/obscure ones, and making sure all the important ones were there. Noel 18:36, 5 Mar 2004 (UTC)
replies: text: Blast! 821 and 822 are listed as "obsoleted by 2821 and 2822", so I'm amazed to find that their status is "STANDARD" and not "HISTORIC". In general, I didn't list any RFC as "important" if it was listed as "obsoleted by RFC xxx". (In fact, I started off by adding those two, and later took them out when I found them listed as "obsoleted by".) Must be a temporary glitch in the system. Noel 03:27, 20 Mar 2004 (UTC)
replies: text:  Not a glitch, except in the sense that the IETF process doesn't quite make sense when a new version of a Standard protocol is introduced at a Proposed Standard level. Blame it on RFC 2026. Alvestrand 01:30, 26 December 2005 (UTC)
thread_title: Imporant RFCs (again)

message: I once tried to find the oldest public file on the internet and I came to the conclusion it was RFC 1 (filename '1') which I found on a university ftp with the timestamp of 7 April 1969. I can't seem to find this file anymore, does anyone know of it?
:I just disproved my own theory when I read this at everything2.com: 'Crocker wrote the RFC late at night in his bathroom [on a piece of paper], so as to avoid awakening his roommates.' Looks like the file I found had a bogus filestamp.
::It isn't a bogus timestamp, it's the date that it was written. It says the date that it was put into machine readable form near the bottom of the file. --P4ch3c0 00:23, 30 March 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  Oldest Public File on the Internet 

message: Yes, I removed all of the lists. I know there will be mixed reactions, but here is the rationale:
#The lists contravene Wikipedia policy. See Wikipedia is not a mirror or a repository of links, images, or media files.
#The "External links" section contains several links to sites that categorize RFCs by subject, classification (BCP, Internet standard, etc.), and import. Also, some of the lists were just old reproductions of updated lists mirrored elsewhere.
#Wikipedia articles about technologies defined in RFCs already provide links to their respective RFCs; for centralized repositories, there are better resources (see also point 1).
#Linking to any RFCs in a list or tabular format invites others to expand the lists—and we've already seen where that leads us.
#If a particular RFC was pivotal in the history of the IETF and the concept of RFCs (e.g., RFC 1), it can be mentioned in the text. On submission, an inline reference in the form of "RFC #" is automatically parsed into a link to the official document.
– Ringbang 14:14, 14 November 2005 (UTC)
thread_title:  Lists of RFCs removed 

message: FYI: Maybe we could arrange a better link for RFC 4321 anywhere in plain text, see MediaWiki talk:Rfcurl. -- Omniplex 16:40, 16 April 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  [[MediaWiki:Rfcurl]] 

message: The History section includes the phrase
"because UCLA was one of the first Interface Message Processors (IMPs) on ARPANET.".
Is that really correct usage of the term Interface Message Processor?
It's my understanding that an IMP was the interface to the network,
like a NIC is on a LAN.
How about
"because UCLA had one of the first IMPs on ARPANET"?
JöG 20:27, 30 September 2006 (UTC)
thread_title: Being an IMP?

message: This article for some reason has been repeatedly vandalized and significant content was lost since May, until I noticed what was going on this afternoon.  If the pattern continues, semi-protection may be necessary.  I am flagging the issue so the admins can monitor this article and act accordingly. --Coolcaesar 06:55, 27 July 2007 (UTC)
thread_title:  This article may need semi-protection 

message: RFC references are automagically linked in Wikipedia, but I haven't run across anything that documents this. I'm absolutely certain I could if I dug harder, but that's kind of my point: shouldn't there be at least a passing mention of it here, presumably as a hatnote?  I know this would clutter the article a bit, so alternatively, maybe it could be mentioned in a hatnote on Wikipedia:Request for Comment?  If not, where should I be looking?
The reason I really bring this up, other than the obvious "feature documentation should be easy to find" point, is a related topic: what's the best way to cite an RFC?
I'm currently editing an article that has such a cite, which currently uses the  template.  The problem, as I see it, is that this template requires a URL.  Hardwiring a URL in this fashion seems to me to work against the WP "automagic RFC link" feature, since the automagic link is presumably to what is felt by consensus to be a canonical source, which may change some time in the future.  If RFC URLs are also hardwired in  links scattered throughtout articles, this defeats one of the purposes of having the automagic links.
I think the proper solution would be to have a new dedicated  template that would require a serial number field instead of a URL field, and use the same routines as the automagic to generate the appropriate link.  It could then also have only the fields appropriate to an RFC, rather than the more generic  fields.
Or maybe the right answer is "don't cite RFCs at all; let the automagic stand in place of a cite."  This doesn't seem entirely sufficient to me.
This is probably the wrong place to discuss this, but I'm not sure where the right place would be...--NapoliRoma (talk) 20:51, 13 January 2008 (UTC)
replies: text: I have not had much time lately to do more work on this area.   If anyone could help out, I think it would improve the wikipedia.   Please don't count on me doing much more in the near future.  Wrs1864 (talk) 20:03, 17 January 2008 (UTC)

text: For what is worth, I recently started looking into writing a  template, but someone does it first, that would be great.  As far as your questions go, yes, I think template should handle all the series, although this could be a problem since the tools.ietf.org website doesn't handle the fyi and std series, just the rfc and bcp series.  I can not see an easy way of figuring out inside a template that an RFC happens to also be a STD/FYI/BCP, so I wasn't planning on doing that.  I was going to make the template as simple as I could and wasn't going to deal with problems like you mentioned with STD 10.  In my searching of RFC references, I found that to be an extremely rare situation so leaving it to the editor shouldn't be a large problem.  Wrs1864 (talk) 12:57, 27 May 2008 (UTC)
replies: text: The URL for the automatical links to RFCs is defined in MediaWiki:rfcurl, there is a talk page with the history. Meanwhile the IETF Tools Server URLs are the MediaWiki default, and I'm sure that this is documented in a Meta help page, but I'm too lazy to look where. You can get the same effect as RFC 2345 by writing , demo: . The ISBN magic is more convoluted, there is a MediaWiki page like  pointing to a project page, default Project:Book sources, and the ISBN magic uses the designated book sources page as a kind of template replacing a magic word by the given ISBN (not what we know as "template" and "magic word", it's a specific magic for ISBNs). I don't see the point of using urn:ietf:rfc:4408 (or similar) without a resolver. The IETF considers to create an ISSN for the whole RFC series, maybe that helps (?) --217.184.142.38 (talk) 18:36, 28 May 2008 (UTC)
thread_title:  IETF RFC handling in Wikipedia; best way to cite 

message: How about a section covering the URI for RFCs?  For example,
urn:ietf:rfc:2141
.
The section could cover the theory and potential and actual use.  Potential use could be a browser plugin/extension which would enable one to turn
<a href="urn:ietf:rfc:2141">such an link</a>
into a link to the RFC at the user's favorite RFC mirror.  Actual use of the URN on the web right now is non-existant as far as I know.
69.205.54.39 (talk) 16:09, 18 April 2008 (UTC)
thread_title:  URI for RFCs 

message: In early years of networking only relatively small number of people was engaged in creating standards and thus had enormous influence on modern networking. It would be nice to mention them here.  —Preceding unsigned comment added by 89.78.201.152 (talk) 16:55, 11 October 2009 (UTC)
replies: text: Not sure it belongs in this article - but just as an exercise, it could be interesting to pair up the list of people with many RFCs with the list of people on Wikipedia and see who's in both places.... while # of RFCs does not necessarily correlate to influence, some of the people with many RFCs are influential. --Alvestrand (talk) 05:45, 12 October 2009 (UTC)

text: In fact this seemed like so much fun that I started a list. See User:Alvestrand/RFC authors for status. --Alvestrand (talk) 06:21, 12 October 2009 (UTC)
replies: text: There is also RFC 1336:--Tothwolf (talk) 14:56, 21 October 2009 (UTC)
thread_title:  Write about RFC people 

message: The article should explain why it is that Requests for Comments changed from requests for comments into final standards.  — Preceding unsigned comment added by 84.243.199.239 (talk) 07:45, 15 May 2015 (UTC)
thread_title:  Explanation of change 

message: Are the results of an RFC just a vote count, or do the !votes have to invoke Wikipedia !rules and Wikipedia !law? Is calling something trivia a valid RFC comment that counts as a !vote? --Richard Arthur Norton (1958- ) (talk) 15:53, 24 November 2015 (UTC)
thread_title:  Voting 

message: The article currently seems pretty focused on how RFCs are used by the IETF, when in reality they're used much more broadly in all sorts of decentralized projects; of course, there's the Wikipedia usage at the top of the page (and the government uses briefly touched upon), but there's the Rust and Haskell programming languages, the Yarn package manager, the Ethereum blockchain, and others. It's become general internet vernacular for a process to change something with wide input, and I think our article should recognize that. Shrug-shrug (talk) 02:47, 11 April 2018 (UTC)
thread_title:  Article refocus? 

message: Internet Draft is not clearly independently notable. Could be handled as a subsection of Request_for_Comments#Status. ~Kvng (talk) 15:42, 3 May 2021 (UTC)
thread_title:  Merge from [[Internet Draft]] 

message: Request for Comments is a generic term.  Rather than a Self Reference:   we'd need something like a generic Hatnote .
A good description can be found in Writing up an RFC, which cites PHP's RFCs.  Rust also collects RFCs, and US gov uses this acronym too.
I'm not clear whether we should redirect to what kind of new short page.  Not a disambiguation page, unless we want to have wiki pages for many kinds of RFCs.  Also a wikiktionary entry (if they'll keep it):  ale (talk) 10:44, 23 February 2023 (UTC)
replies: text: Thank u for the update as always i will research all possibilities before making a action.  I’m positive wiki cannot be a source code base it’s too narrative 47.185.211.92 (talk) 06:27, 16 August 2023 (UTC)
thread_title:  Disambiguation needed 

message: The astute will notice some edits to the "Streams" section.  That's because the text was a bit dated, and never really matched what was described in the references. Pigdog234 (talk) 12:05, 19 August 2023 (UTC)
thread_title:  Redid Streams