Re: [IAB] Appeal: Independent Submission Editor declination of draft-darley-cvss-v5-skull-emoji-01

Hi,

Since there is no such I-D in the datatracker (as is normal for April 1st submissions), it's a little hard to have an opinion on the merits.

As for the principle, it seems to me that the ISE has unfettered discretion about April 1st RFCs. Apart from a mention of "Satirical materials" in RFC 4846, I think nothing is written down. RFC 8730 says that the ISE is responsible for "Reviewing, approving, and processing Independent Submissions." It doesn't define any appeal mechanism.

Regards/Ngā mihi
    Brian Carpenter

On 18-Apr-26 08:07, Independent Submissions Editor (Eliot Lear) wrote:
> For the benefit of all, this was an April 1st candidate that was declined because the text could have been perceived to make fun of another organization, and I thought it best that we poke fun at ourselves and not others.  I welcome community feedback on this or any other publication decision.
> 
> Eliot
> 
> On 17.04.2026 18:46, Pete Resnick wrote:
>> Dear IAB,
>>
>> I'm always a bit disappointed when leadership (be it a WG Chair, AD, IESG, or IAB) rejects a complaint on purely procedural grounds, particularly in cases where they could have reasonably interpreted the complaint in a different and rational way. In this case, while it is certainly true that there is no formal "appeal" path for rejections from the ISE, there is a path for "IAB review" (as you cited in your decision not to process). The appellant did say specifically, "I am requesting that the IAB review the ISE's stated grounds for declination...". You could have reasonably interpreted their appeal as a request for IAB review. At that point, you could have simply declined to do the review for whatever reasons you wished because, as 4846 says, "the IAB is not obligated to perform that review", or you could have done the review but reminded the author that 4846 continues, "nor is the RFC Editor obligated to publish it, even with a favorable IAB review". By saying you have 
>> decided not to process the appeal instead of interpreting it as a request for review, you are effectively telling the author that they should re-word their appeal as a request for IAB review, which as far as I can tell would be a hoop-jumping exercise.
>>
>> The Principle of Charity [1] would have gone a long way here, and the outcome would have been no different AFAICT.
>>
>> pr
>>
>> [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Principle_of_charity
>>
>>