Whatwg [Re: How to get feedback on published RFCs]

[Brian E Carpenter <[e-mail]>]

On 20/07/2016 02:13, Miles Fidelman wrote:
> On 7/19/16 7:54 AM, Yaron Sheffer wrote:
> 
>> 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.
>>
> 
> Maybe a silly observation, but we might look at the HTML "Living Standard" (https://html.spec.whatwg.org/multipage/) - as
> maintained by WHATWG.   Their process seems to have the benefit of working reasonably well over time.

If that is your impression, I have to wonder whether you've ever tried to
"dialogue" with whatwg on a matter that challenges their received wisdom.
I don't think that is a good model for the IETF to follow.

    Brian