On Sun, Oct 16, 2022 at 10:57 PM Eric Vyncke (evyncke) <evyncke=40cisco.com@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:
> I don't agree to respect the funny RFCs which are issued in April a waste of time and effort, I will not call
> it any word that makes me out of the list but it is very strange that some participants say it is IETF culture,
> which I don't seem to know if IETF have defined what is its culture or defining motives for such funny-RFCs.
> So I don't respect those RFCs because it does not title that it is a joke or drama,
>
> The reader needs to be respected, so the technology-producer, or document-producer needs to
> respect/understand the Reader's interests, without making him feel bad. I discussed about this before, but maybe time will help,
I would not call April 1st RFC as "culture", but it is indeed quite deep in the "folklore" and traditions of the IETF. It may be linked to the fact that April 1st jokes are told in my own country even on mainstream newspapers and TV channels, therefore I can understand that other IETF'ers do not find this funny. In this case, there are usually easy to spot (they are the only ones having a day in the publication date) to allow either a careful reading with a smile or to skip the reading.
Thanks for your input :-) and I enjoyed reading your documents because I understood the Objectives before reading the documents' body.
Newspapers or TV channels are *Communication-Channels* with Clear-Objectives (with clear Track, as some RFCs clarify Informational/Standard) to the country-community or the world but their Output is *titled* as making knowledge or jokes or or test or other, they usually make *Objectives* Clear as All respected English Writers/Speakers, however, when we come for speaking (communicating with voice within low noise) as Output it is maybe allowable to make separate jokes while discussing serious objectives because the speaker will have signals by voice without noise. In writing there should be a clear signal to reader that a section of document is a joke and maybe best to clarify the objective of joke if it was not easy to be clarified by a human.
In best English writing they tell us to give the reader information of what will you say before you say it then tell them what you just said as summary.
My objective of disagreement with IETF was in the IETF-Output which is sending a RFC to the World using one communicating-channel to the World Without clarifying the *Aim or Objectives* of such Output but only using a *Date* to make such signal it was Joking ot Testing.
The whole intent is to bring smile on several faces, not to waste time of course.
Yes all good people want that but by using principles of communication, and there are differences between human-communication and machine-communication which some people may be mistaken specially when they use technology within their communication environment.
-éric (author of RFC 5514 published on this very special date)
IMHO this RFC5514 is misleading the reader because it has not clarified the real *Aim* of such document. We need to look into English *Writing Principles* and into *Communication Principles* between writer and reader. Those output from IETF are not doing a *good job* on that date and through their life of communication as long some readers have low SNR within a noisless-channel (the IETF is making the Noise).
PS: I had more fun writing this useless RFC than for any of my other RFCs ;-)
Yes it can be fun writing/reading any document only when all the readers are within a defined environment and they are all known to the Writer, but in future some other-environment-reader may not be having fun reading if the written-document was not telling them in abstarct/title that it was a joke or test.
Best Wishes,
AB
