Dear IETF Community: Due to a lot of hard work, the RFC Editor is publishing approved Internet-Drafts more quickly. Overall this is just what we want to happen. However, I am concerned that the RFC Editor is might be getting too quick. Anyone can appeal the approval of a document in the two months following the approval. In the past, there was not any danger of the RFC Editor publishing a document before this timer expired, and the only documents that became RFCs in less than 60 days were the ones where the IESG explicitly asked for expedited processing. The recent improvements by the RFC Editor make it likely that all documents will be moving through the publication process in less than two months. If we receive an appeal before the RFC is published, we can put a hold on the document, preventing pblication until the appeal has been studied. However, we have no way to pull an RFC back if it is published before the appeal arrives. As we all know, once an RFC is published, it cannot be changed. Thus, the RFCs form an archival series. If we find a bug in an RFC, we write a revised RFC that obsoletes the one that contains the error. So, what should we do if there is a successful appeal after the RFC is published? While we figure out what policy we want, I have asked the RFC Editor to not publish any IESG approved documents until their appeal timer has expired. I also challenged the RFC Editor to move things along so fast that this matters. I suspect they can. Which means that the whole IETF community needs to help the leadership figure out the appropriate policy before the rapid processing of Internet-Draft documents into RFCs becomes the norm. Russ _______________________________________________ Ietf@xxxxxxxx https://www1.ietf.org/mailman/listinfo/ietf