How to get feedback on published RFCs

[Yaron Sheffer <[e-mail]>]

Once an RFC is published, there is essentially no way for readers to provide feedback: what works, what are the implementation pitfalls, how does the document relate to other technologies or even to other RFCs.

We IETF insiders usually know what is the relevant working group, and can take our feedback there. Non-insiders though don't have any contact point, and so will most likely keep their feedback to themselves. These non-IETFers are the target audience of our documents! Unfortunately, our so-called "Requests for Comments" are anything but an invitation to submit comments.

There is a number of tools now that allow "web annotations" (i.e., comments) on various published documents. I submitted a draft [1] recently that proposes to enable annotations on the "tools" version of our RFCs. Technically, this is a trivial change. From a process point of view it is more complicated and merits discussion on this list. Sec. 6 of the draft allows you to see for yourself what such annotations would look like.

I am here in Berlin if people prefer to talk it over in person. Otherwise, please reply on this list.

Thanks,
    Yaron 

[1] https://tools.ietf.org/html/draft-sheffer-ietf-rfc-annotations-00" rel="nofollow">https://tools.ietf.org/html/draft-sheffer-ietf-rfc-annotations-00