Julian, Hi. I believe that the problem your pointing out is real, common, and not so easy to solve. First, you might regard the given definition of Updates as a "best-effort" definition, with all that "best-effort" implies. ;-) I am sure that serious suggestions on a more precise definition would be welcome, but it is unclear how much effort one ought to lavish on word-smithing here. The word "updates" in its common usage seems to carry the desired meaning. The RFC Editor and the IESG frequently struggle with the semantics of the relationships among related RFCs. It is clear that the categories "Obsoletes" and "Updates" are only the high-order bits of often complex relationships. One could add "Partially Updates" and "Partially Obsoletes" I suppose, but it is not clear where to stop or whether this will really meet the need. We have recently been advocating the creation of a series of area-specific "road-map" documents to summarize these relationships; this would get around the limited number of bits in the present categories. Finally, we note that there is an alternative way to do business: the IETF could shape its documents to fit the categories. That is essentially what more formal standards bodies do. The IETF, for good reason, chooses instead to let documents develop in the most expedient fashion, and then notate them with (approximate) notations like Obsoletes and Updates. Bob Braden *> *> Hi, *> *> I'd like to see the concept of an RFC "updating" another RFC clarified. *> Currently the draft says: *> *> Updates *> *> Specifies an earlier document whose contents are modified or *> augmented by the new document. The new document cannot be *> used alone, it can only be used in conjunction with the *> earlier document. *> *> The second statement seems to be misleading. For instance, RFC2396 (URI *> syntax) updates previous RFCs that also contained specific URI scheme *> descriptions (such as "ftp"). Thus, it doesn't obsolete them. However, *> RFC2396 clearly can be used without the documents it's updating. *> *> Regards, Julian *> *> *>