--On Friday, 21 July, 2006 15:12 -0700 Dave Crocker <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
> > > Joe Touch wrote: >>> However, such an editorial effort it expensive and I do not >>> understand why this additional expense is needed. It was >>> not needed for 25 or so years. And now we are more >>> sensitive to expenses. >> >> The set of people writing docs has increased substantially. >> The writing skills of that set have diversified, and the pool >> of potential support has increased. It seems like the two >> mutually support the use of professional editing. > > > We have always had some authors who were truly awful writers. > Whether we have more of them today is, I believe, really not > relevant. > > If an effort is worthy of adoption by the Internet, surely it > is reasonable to demand that it have enough support to be able > to obtain its own means of ensuring that the writing is > adequate. Dave, I am very sympathetic to this argument but think it can easily be carried too far. The IETF is becoming more International. We may find that there is more market for some protocols --and, over time, for the Internet itself-- in areas where a very significant fraction of the user and Engineering populations are not good writers of English (even if they are able to read and speak it well enough to participate effectively in the work of the IETF). I think getting the writing quality of those documents up to a standard where they can be broadly understood is a community responsibility: if we take the position that authors who cannot write clearly in English, or WGs where such people dominate the technical work, are not welcome or able to play, then we hurt the IETF and the Internet but pushing those ideas and contributions somewhere else... perhaps even into islands. > Having sufficient community support is an essential > requirement, if an effort it going to be successful. > Requiring that the effort demonstrate that support, in various > pragmatic ways, is merely reasonable. Sure. But that is consistent with expecting design quality but not necessarily the capability to easily write clear English. > What is NOT reasonabel > is a model that has the IETF formal infrastructure -- > management, editors, etc. -- do the grunt work of making > design and writing decisions. We have amply demonstrated that > this latter model does not scale or is, at the least, too > expensive. (Well, I guess that's a form of not scaling?) Actually, I am not sure that we have demonstrated that at all, amply or not. But, if you say so... > This should all be part of moving the burden of work back to > authors and working groups... where it belongs. Up to a point. But the point that I think you are positing will tend to drive some work --work for which there is good community support and commitment-- out of the IETF. And that is not in anyone's interest, IMO. john _______________________________________________ Ietf mailing list Ietf@ietf.org https://www1.ietf.org/mailman/listinfo/ietf
