Re: Last Call: <draft-resnick-on-consensus-05.txt> (On Consensus and Humming in the IETF) to Informational RFC

[Ted Hardie <[e-mail]>]

On Mon, Oct 7, 2013 at 12:34 PM, Brian E Carpenter <
[e-mail]> wrote:

> On 08/10/2013 08:03, Ted Hardie wrote:
> ...
>
> > were.  On the second point, the truth is that informational RFCs are
> [not]
> > treated as actual requests for comments much any more, but are taken as
> > fixed;
>
> I've inserted the "not" that Ted certainly intended.


Indeed, thanks for the correction.


> But I think he raises
> an important point. If the phrase "Request For Comments" no longer means
> what it says, we need another RFC, with a provisional title of
> "Request For Comments Means What It Says".
>
>



> We still see comments on RFC 791 reasonably often, and I see comments
> on RFC 2460 practically every day. That's as it should be.
>
>
And what are the RFC numbers for the comments?  If none, as I suspect, then
the comments aren't the same status as the documents--that's fine for RFC
791 and 2460, but it is not clear that Pete's document falls into the same
class.  I would argue it does not.



> So I'd like to dispute Ted's point that by publishing a version of
> resnick-on-consensus as an RFC, we will engrave its contents in stone.
> If that's the case, we have an even deeper problem than misunderstandings
> of rough consensus.
>
>
Archival may not mean "engraved in stone", but it does impute status.  If
we want, as a community, to create an archival document on this topic, then
we should take on the work.  Pete's document is a good spark for the
conversation that might kick off that work, but I personally don't think it
is a good output document for that; if it is meant to be a spark, I don't
see why moving it into
an archival series is useful for us at this stage.

regards,

Ted


> otoh Ted's specific points on the draft are all valuable.
>
>     Brian
>