On 2021-04-27, at 18:06, Martin Vigoureux <martin.vigoureux@xxxxxxxxx> wrote: > >> But yes, working drafts do reflect WG consensus, and they have formal standing as such. > At which point in time to do they reflect WG consensus, according to you? I do believe different WGs handle this in different ways. Some WGs have a formal consensus-based process that must be run before the WG documents can be updated. In these, the statement is pretty much true, except that the WG may not have measured consensus yet on what further steps are needed before the document is ready for publication. Some WGs give the editors (authors) of the WG document some leeway to move the document forward based on their perception of WG direction. This is where Section 6.3 of RFC 2418 comes in (note that it says “reflect the decisions of the WG” and does not talk about “consensus"). This is usually more productive in smaller WGs that do not have a large queue of ready-made changes (pull requests) but require the document author to actually do some of the work creating those. I think Keith is recollecting some experience with WGs where the chairs used the WG document process to run the show without much regard to the WG’s opinions. In that case, I’d say: get new chairs! We don’t need to make the process capable of coping with this abuse. Grüße, Carsten
