Comment by Dan42

No, please, just no.

The idea of using PUT, DELETE, or PATCH here is entirely misguided. Maybe it was a good idea, but history has gone in a different direction so now it's irrelevant. About 20 years ago, Firefox attempted to add PUT and DELETE support to the <form> element, only to roll it back. Why? Because the semantics of PUT and DELETE are not consistently implemented across all layers of the HTTP infrastructure—proxies, caches, and intermediary systems. This inconsistency led to unpredictable failures, varying by website, network, and the specific proxy or caching software in use.

The reality we live in, shaped by decades of organic evolution, is that only GET and POST are universally supported across all layers of internet infrastructure.

Take a cue from the WHATWG HTML5 approach: create your RFC based on what is already the de facto standard: GET is for reading, and POST is for writing. The entire internet infrastructure operates on these semantics, with little to no consideration for other HTTP verbs. Trying to push a theoretically "correct" standard ignores this reality and, as people jump into the hype train, will consume significant time and resources across the industry without delivering proportional value. It's going to be XHTML all over again, it's going to be IPv6 all over again.

Please let's just use what already works. GET for reading, POST for writing. That’s all we need to define transport behavior. Any further differentiation—like what kind of read or write—is application-specific and should be decided by the endpoints themselves.

Even the <form> element’s "action" attribute is built for this simplicity. For example, if your resource is /tea/genmaicha/, you could use <form method="post" action="brew">. Voilà, relative URLs in action! This approach is powerful, practical, and aligned with the infrastructure we already rely on.

Let’s not overcomplicate things for the sake of theoretical perfection. KISS.