Fred Baker wrote:
> We're looking pretty hard at the RFC Editor contract, which has a
large overhead fee built into it. Stay tuned in that regard. We have
some ideas and will be doing an RFI or RFP later this year, but they
aren't sufficiently baked just yet to pass aromas around.
What follows is a topic that too-easily invites injudicious comment, so I'll
preface by saying that I'm posting this publicly only as a means of soliciting
public comment on one particular cost: RFC draft proofreading.
After some years of hiatus, I again started working with the RFC Editor on the
details of publishing some documents. So I was surprised to experience the
kind
offices of professional proofreading.
My own assessment is that it has improved the documents. The proofreaders have
their own views of what is correct and that sometimes requires discussion, but
mostly I consider their intervention to have a positive impact.
The question to me -- and which I am posing to everyone else -- is whether the
improvement is worth the cost?
Professional proofreading is not cheap.
While we can easily cite the dangers of badly written specifications, I'll also
note that we got along for a couple of decades without this extra service. IETF
documents that get to the editor have gone through extensive reviewing. We can,
I think easily rely on that fact, since we successfuly did so for 25+ years.
I'll also suggest that any strategic problems that a specification might suffer
cannot be fixed with professional proofreading.
Thoughts?
d/
--
Dave Crocker
Brandenburg InternetWorking
bbiw.net
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