CURRENT_MEETING_REPORT_ Reported by Alan Emtage/Bunyip and Peter Deutsch/Bunyip Minutes of the Internet Anonymous FTP Archives Working Group (IAFA) 1. The Minutes of the Boston meeting were accepted as read. 2. A draft of April Marine's IAFA User's Document was reviewed. There was some discussion about the need for coordinating changes to this document if IAFA were to close, which led in turn to a discussion about whether such additional work should be done through IAFA or returned to the Use Services Working Group. It was decided that it was not desirable to continue IAFA if its principal work on the IAFA documents was completed. it was agreed that if it was decided by the end of the meeting that IAFA's primary work on the Site Administrators' documents is done, then future editing of the User Document should be done in the User Services Working Group at the next IETF. 3. A final discussion was made on the two part Site Administrator's Draft Documents. A number of minor changes were proposed, including the need to spell out that such template items as Mailing List support free form text, that server types can include LISTSERV or MAILBASE and that mailing lists can be OPEN, CLOSED or PRIVATE. It was also agreed that we should include a specific citation of the privacy and accuracy policies RFC in these documents. It was agreed that we should have an ``X-field'' to allow users to add experimental fields. These could be ignored by automatic indexing software or treated as they saw fit. It was also suggested that we include a ``See-Also'' field. It was also agreed that we could beef up the ``reasonable practices'' field in the documents to include more specific recommendations about what a new site administrator should know about running a site. Examples suggested include: o Use descriptive filenames on newly created files o Don't arbitrarily change filenames copied from other sites o Update README files regularly, to ensure users get current (and valid) information. Alan Emtage will coordinate making these last recommended changes in the final draft and circulate to the list as soon as possible. Once this is done, the two drafts will be submitted to the RFC editor for advancement to draft status. 4. Some discussion was held about coordinating the implementation of IAFA templates across the Internet. Volunteers were sought to help 1 coordinate an ``implementation phase'' in which sites were encouraged to install IAFA templates describing their anonymous FTP archive's contents. Several possible avenues for promoting the use of the IAFA templates were suggested, including approaching the moderators of appropriate source-distribution Usenet newsgroups, plus the moderators of prominent archive sites, to persuade them to request the use of IAFA templates for future submissions. In addition, it was agreed that those involved in the implementation phase should coordinate closely with those working on other projects or information delivery schemes, including Gopher, TopNode and others. Several people volunteered to help with a cataloging effort and once the final editing copy goes to draft status a mailing list will be set up at bunyip.com to coordinate the authoring and caching of completed templates for the most popular packages already on the net. Volunteers to work on this effort will be sought both through the IAFA Working Group and throughs such avenues as comp.archives.admin and other archive-related newsgroups. The following have volunteered their sites to act as repositories for completed templates: o Paul Holbrook (holbrook@cic.net) o Laura Kelleher (lak@merit.edu) o Mitra (mitra@pandora.sf.ca.us) o Simon Spero (ses@sunsite.unc.edu) 5. New Business: The possibility for liaison work with other groups was discussed briefly (including the new IIIR, NIR, URI Working Groups at the IETF and the library community through such efforts as TopNode, etc.) but it was agreed that IAFA has already fulfilled its Charter and should leave such work to other working groups. Given the successful completion of the Site Administration documents, it was voted to close the Working Group after this meeting. The mailing list and archive will continue while the documents advance through the draft stage and the Co-Chairs will help coordinate the implementation recommendations outlined above. Attendees Brian Bataille bataillebc@afotec.af.mil Jodi-Ann Chu jodi@uhunix.uhcc.hawaii.edu David Conklin conklin@jvnc.net Naomi Courter naomi@concert.net Peter Deutsch peterd@bunyip.com Alan Emtage bajan@bunyip.com Jill Foster jill.foster@newcastle.ac.uk Jim Fullton jim_fullton@unc.edu Joan Gargano jcgargano@ucdavis.edu Deborah Hamilton debbie@qsun.att.com 2 Alisa Hata hata@cac.washington.edu Russ Hobby rdhobby@ucdavis.edu Ellen Hoffman ellen_hoffman@um.cc.umich.edu J. Paul Holbrook holbrook@cic.net Lenore Jackson jackson@nsipo.nasa.gov Laura Kelleher lak@merit.edu Edward Krol e-krol@uiuc.edu John Kunze jak@violet.berkeley.edu Edward Levinson levinson@pica.army.mil E. Paul Love loveep@sdsc.edu Gary Malkin gmalkin@xylogics.com Janet Marcisak jlm@ftp.com Michael Mealling michael@fantasy.gatech.edu Mitra mitra@pandora.sf.ca.us Charlotte Mooers mooers@nnsc.nsf.net Mark Needleman mhn@stubbs.ucop.edu Pete Percival percival@indiana.edu Marsha Perrott mlp+@andrew.cmu.edu Mel Pleasant pleasant@hardees.rutgers.edu Joyce K. Reynolds jkrey@isi.edu Bradley Rhoades bdrhoades@mail.mmmg.com Richard Rodgers rodgers@nlm.nih.gov Anthony Rutkowski amr@sprint.com Jane Smith jds@jazz.concert.net Patricia Smith psmith@merit.edu Joo Young Song jysong@ring.kotel.co.kr Simon Spero simon_spero@unc.edu Janet Vratny janet@apple.com Chris Weider clw@merit.edu Moira West mjw@cert.org Evan Wetstone evan@rice.edu William Yurcik yurcik@dftnic.gsfc.nasa.gov 3