On 6/23/22 04:14, S Moonesamy wrote:
Hi Keith,
At 01:49 PM 22-06-2022, Keith Moore wrote:
Such feedback sounds really presumptuous and at least borderline offensive. It creates more heat than light.
The "more heat than light" idiom is not easily understood by someone who is not familiar with IETF English.
That's interesting, and thanks for the feedback. I think the
phrase is quite common in English (not just in IETF). I thought
it's meaning would convey in most languages, as fundamentally it's
contrasting between two attributes of fire which is surely known
all over the world. I thought the meaning of "light" as
illumination, something that makes things easier to see, versus
"heat" as something that encourages anger, was obvious. But now
I see that the phrase "more light than heat" occurs in
Shakespeare's play Hamlet, and in that quote it's the
heat that's taken to be the desirable property. So now I see
that the meaning is not inherently obvious at all!
Thanks for the pointer to the article; it looks interesting.
You pointed out that the style of feedback could be construed as "borderline offensive". If I am not mistaken, some of the persons who commented on the thread were also arguing against that style of feedback.
The is a research article [1] which discusses a "club good approach" viewed through the IETF process. I could choose to discuss the "club good approach" with the author as she might be able to share a perspective which is different from what I see or I could choose to go with IETF groupthink. The groupthink happens when an idea is described as bad because it was tried before and failed. The assumptions on which the idea was based, which were current thinking over a decade ago, may no longer be valid. I am not sure whether an experienced participant might catch that if he/she is more interested in doing damage control.
In general I think it's both difficult and frightening to re-examine long-held assumptions, particularly when there's significant investment in them. I expect that this true for most people if not everyone. And I suspect it's even more difficult for a group of people to re-examine long-held assumptions, than for any individual person.
Keith
