Re: prohibiting RFC publication

At 03:51 PM 4/8/00 -0700, Karl Auerbach wrote:
> If the IETF engages in routine non-acceptance of "informational" documents
> on the basis of non-technical concerns the IETF will, I believe, lose its
> clear and loud voice when that voice is most needed to be heard.
That's a valid concern. The trade-off of interest to me is the one between 
publishing standards and publishing other documents. If you look at other 
bodies, their standards are clearly identifies - they only publish 
standards. We also publish other things, but do so under a nomenclature 
that is readily wrestled to the appearance of support as standards. We're 
all aware of cases where something was poublished as informational, 
experimental, etc, and the next press release announced support of that 
"standard", and of cases where RFCs, like IP on Avian Carriers, started 
winding up on RFPs simply because it was an RFC, and therefore "must" be 
the standard. This is another case of meaning dilution that I worry about.
To my recollection, the IESG has recommended very rarely that the RFC 
Editor literally not publish a document. We have added wording changes in 
the title, added IESG notes that say in effect "the IESG thinks this is a 
profoundly bad idea", and so on. The cases of not publishing at all that 
come quickly to mind are limited to Bill Simpson's documents about which 
there was an appeal last year. We didn't publish them because they did not 
give us license to change the text, the text said "this is the one true way 
to do" certain things related to IPSEC, and the IPSEC Working Group had 
similar-but-not-the-same documents. We felt that publishing both was likely 
to give the impression that Bill's informational documents were updating 
and changing the documents that the working group produced, and introduce a 
high probability of non-interoperable implementation. We didn't publish 
because we were of the opinion that it was better for the community.
I believe that the RFC Editor's also decides to not publish quite apart 
from IESG input, and does so when documents that come their lack substance. 
But their ethic tends to be that the RFC Series is the community memory, so 
recording things that do have substance is good even if they are bad ideas, 
because it let's someone else learn from the experiment.