The RFC publication series is where all kinds of IETF documents are published, standards or not. Having a RFC number doesn't mean that a document is or isn't standards track. IOW all IETF standards are RFCs, but not all RFCs are standards or proposed standards.
The "request for comments" title of the series does remind us of the collegial and unbureucratic roots of the IETF, vowing to reject kings, presidents and voting & believing in rough consensus plus running code etc :) however in the standards track case there is no rfc number assigned to the doc in the draft phase, it's instead published in the separate internet-drafts directory by the working group and goes through all kinds of process and iteration before getting published as a proposed standard RFC.
The "request for comments" title of the series does remind us of the collegial and unbureucratic roots of the IETF, vowing to reject kings, presidents and voting & believing in rough consensus plus running code etc :) however in the standards track case there is no rfc number assigned to the doc in the draft phase, it's instead published in the separate internet-drafts directory by the working group and goes through all kinds of process and iteration before getting published as a proposed standard RFC.
See eg https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Internet_Standard