IESG review of RFC Editor documents

[Keith Moore <[e-mail]>]

Okay, I read draft-iesg-rfced-documents-00.txt regarding a proposed 
change in IESG policy regarding RFC-Ed documents.

I'm opposed to the change, because I believe it would make it too easy 
for harmful documents to be published as RFCs.

Part of the problem is the familiar one that RFCs are often used as 
standards even when they carry the Informational or Experimental label. 
  Publishing an Informational RFC is therefore a way to get the 
appearance of standardization and IETF imprimatur without actually 
having to produce a sound technical design, achieve rough consensus, 
and endure review from IESG and interested parties.

A big part of the problem is that the proposed policy would only allow 
IESG to object to the publication of a document in the case where there 
was an active working group in an area, or where the document would 
violate a pre-established procedure.   Since working groups are 
typically chartered to work on a narrow topic and for a limited time, 
at any given time many technical subject areas are not covered by a 
working group, and many new protocols would not conflict with any 
particular working group even if they would conflict with (for 
instance) the operation of established protocols.

Many believe it's unreasonable for IESG to spend its time reviewing 
documents for which there is no broad support.  However, if it is 
unreasonable to expect IESG volunteers to perform adequate technical 
review on documents for which there is no broad support, surely it is 
even less reasonable to expect the RFC Editor (which appears to have 
even more limited resources and less breadth than the IESG) to perform 
such review.   And while the RFC Editor could (and I assume does) 
enlist volunteers to assist it in such review, this amounts to an 
approval process for IETF publications that isn't accountable to the 
IETF community, not even with a noncom-like mechanism.

I do think we need to find a better way to deal with individual 
submissions.  I don't think that for IESG to simply say "this is the 
RFC Editor's problem" is sufficient.

Here's an alternate proposal:

- In order to be considered worthy of review, any individual submission 
must first have the support of two (maybe three) members of the group 
consisting of all current IESG members, all current IAB members, and 
all current WG chairs.

- Such proposals are then subject to a 4-week Last Call for 
Informational or Experimental.

- A significant show of support in the form of Last Call comments would 
normally be required for publication.

- Review of such proposals and their Last Calls would be conducted by a 
panel of volunteers appointed by IESG.  For instance, each AD could 
appoint one person.  The review panel could vote on whether to 
recommend publication, request revisions in light of Last Call or 
reviewers' comments, or to recommend against publication in light of 
Last Call comments (or lack of support).

- If the review board recommends publications, the RFC Editor would 
perform the same functions on these documents that it performs for WG 
Informational and/or Experimental documents.

- Decisions of the review board would be subject to appeal to IESG.