(off-list)
John C Klensin wrote:
The first sentence of the writeup template, "As required by RFC
4858, this is the current template..." is technically invalid
because RFC 4858, as an Informational document, cannot _require_
anything of the standards process.
I'm OK with asserting that an Informational document does not (necessarily)
represent community consensus, and therefore can not mandate changes on stuff
which _has_ community consensus (be it processes or protocol standards).
This might also be the reason why we have to be careful to limit
downward references, i.e. having normative references to
Informational documents in standards track documents/specifications.
But I consider your original choice of words misleading.
We do allow re-publication of documents developed elsewhere as
informational RFCs, and when such documents are technical specifications,
they usually contain conformance requirements (for conformance to that
particular specification), and use rfc2119 keywords. Sometimes with
an explicit pointer rfc2119, sometimes without.
Neither the use of rfc2119 keywords for conformance, nor the
pointer to rfc2119 for explaining the meanung of the keywords,
by themselves, make any document an IETF standard. Only IETF
consensus and IESG standards action does that.
-Martin