[rfc-i] Public face for the RFC series

[Russ Housley]

Paul:

Right now, the person that discovers a problem sends an email to 
rfc-editor at rfc-editor.org and it is routed within the staff to the 
proper person to resolve the concern.  I hope this remains the 
case.  The RFC Publisher is the (back office) function that runs the 
web site on behalf of all aspects of the RFC Editor operation.  I 
think the exchange with Brian, Bob, and myself was about making this 
relationship clear.  Do you disagree with the "exercises 
executive-level management" outcome of that discussion?

Russ

At 11:27 AM 1/20/2009, Paul Hoffman wrote:
>Greetings again. The changes proposed by Olaf on 2009-01-19 have a 
>new phrase that was not mentioned in draft-iab-rfc-editor-model-03: 
>"the entity that faces the community". It is good to see this 
>considered, but the new wording and the recently-previewed RFI are 
>at conflict with regard to the public face of the RFC series.
>
>If the RSE is meant to be the public face for the RFC series, that 
>person should be able to make the tools that the public sees when 
>looking at the RFC series. However, tool design, maintenance, and 
>deployment are run by the production center and the publisher.
>
>Two not-too-hypothetical scenarios illustrate this problem:
>
>- An author with a document in process goes to rfc-editor.org to see 
>the status of his document and finds that something is very wrong. 
>That author would then go to the RSE, who does not have any control 
>over the problem and also does not have control over the tool that 
>caused the problem.
>
>- An IETF participant goes to rfc-editor.org to look for all RFCs on 
>a particular topic and finds some serious problems with the search 
>mechanism. That participant would then go to the RSE, who does not 
>have any control over the problem and also does not have control 
>over the tool that caused the problem.
>
>If the RSE is meant to be the entity that faces the community on RFC 
>issues, that person needs to have control over what the community 
>sees on rfc-editor.org, both during the publishing process and after 
>publication. If they don't have any control over the content, they 
>should not be put up as the public face of the RFC series, but 
>should instead just be the coordinator/overseer/manager of the 
>process, interfacing mostly with the IAB and IAOC except during 
>one-way presentations at plenaries.
>
>--Paul Hoffman, Director
>--VPN Consortium