(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