The Correctness Hierarchy
This is an ordered list of how correct something tends to be, from the standpoint of a Network Engineer.
Ariadne’s maxim
The more correct a material tends to be, the harder it becomes to understand and/or access.
The list
A tier list ranking sources of technical correctness from S (most authoritative) to F (least): S is observed behavior, A is published standards, B is inventor sources, C is vendor sources, D is Wikipedia, E is content creator sources, F is vendor marketing and social media.
Terms
Published Standards — IETF Documents or IEEE documents
Inventor — The person who created it
Distinguished Engineer — Someone famous in the Industry
Content Creator — Someone making content
Examples
Using the AI to be correct is a failing grade at F-tier. Same goes for social media (let’s say, TikTok, Linkedin, Facebook, et. al)
Vendors lie when they market, so they also go to F-tier.
Textbooks are E-tier, there is no independent auditing of textbook correctness, and they are very difficult to correct once published.
If the vendor has a textbook, that’s D-tier. Usually, a certification is tied to it, so they are a touch better edited.
The vendor community is interesting, people post both very stupid questions, but also get brilliant answers. Solid C-tier.
Vendor materials can’t get above C-tier because money is always involved. Getting material published at a vendor is difficult enough.
John Moy’s book on OSPF is B-tier. Ivan’s site https://blog.ipspace.net/ is also B-tier, he’s been in the Industry forever.
The RFC for OSPFv2 is A-tier, it’s what we all refer to to check the behavior, otherwise we need to get onto a mailing list.
A setup running OSPFv2 is S-tier. It might be ancient, broken, or incorrect, but we cannot argue that it did not happen.