1. I think that the PEP author has the final say as to what specific text goes into the PEP. Contributors shouldn't modify other people's PEP without consent from the author(s).

2. This holds for all stages, including the Final stage. If the PEP author wants to clarify/elaborate, they may; if they don't feel like it, they don't need to (even if the implementation later deviates from the PEP).

3. We should avoid to refer to PEPs for specification in the documentation. If there is a documentation issue proposing to update the PEP because it's referenced from the documentation, the right action should be to stop referencing it, and to incorporate the PEP text into the documentation (as needed).

4. Even without the "In general" cop-out, I think the PEP is fine as written. It doesn't say (as Chris suggested in msg176603) that Final PEPs *should not* be modified, but that they *are not* modified. PEP 1 describes an ideal process, nobody should be surprised that the real world does not always follow the ideal. My biggest complaint about PEP 1 not being followed is the "PEP authors are responsible for collecting community feedback" requirement. Editing Final PEPs is absolutely no concern to me, since the PEP has already achieved what it was written for. So even if this rule was regularly ignored, I'd still continue to be a happy contributor to Python.