Should the published RFC landing page show metadata+formats or the content or both?

[JayDaley]

An often repeated complaint about the rfc-editor.org website is that when you find the page for an RFC you are not presented with the RFC to read but only information about the RFC and the various formats available to view/download it in. The reason for that, as I understand it, is hat this is the way that academic publishing works and that it the information that is expected to be found, and nobody has been able to agree on what format should be shown alongside that when people land.

it seems as if this is reasonably easy to fix:

• The landing page is enhanced so that the content of the RFC can also be shown in addition to the existing information, whatever format is chosen, and there is a simple "hide" feature for the metadata.
• We pick a default format that is shown to the first time visitor (HTML would be my preference)
• Visitors can store a preference as to which format they want to be their personal default for reading.
• If people want to the PDF/Plain Text/XML format without adornment then they have an option to download or view in the browser.

[paulehoffman]

Not a policy issue. :-)

[mnot]

@paulehoffman perhaps, but if the RPC and/or ED want to get a sense of the community about an issue that affects them, or a community member wants to offer a suggestion, the RSWG is a reasonable place to look. I'd suggest having a label / designation for such issues to make it clear that they're not going to turn into I-Ds and consensus positions.