On Mar 27, 2007, at 8:10 PM, Andy Bierman wrote: ... > I find it rather annoying to listen to the constant interruptions, > reminding people of the process. The only reasons for such an > interruption are: ... > 2) you plan to base your opinion of the imminent comment on either > who says it or more likely, what company they work for > > In either case, the interruption is not adding value to the technical > discussion. Are you saying that we should not consider reputation when judging the technical soundness of comments? I disagree. I can think of at least three cases in which knowing which person said something will affect my interpretation of a comment. 1) When a working group is discussing something involving other WGs or areas (security in an apps group, etc), knowing that a comment came from someone who *is* strong in that area does affect whether I consider it as resolving the question. Hearing "TLS can/can't do what you need" from a random apps WG chair means something different than hearing it from, say, EKR. For the former, I might ask for details to find whether the person might be thinking of a similar-but-not-quite case, while for the latter I might jump directly to asking for a direct recommendation on where to look next. 2) Whenever someone uses the phrase "in my experience", I cannot evaluate their statement without some knowledge of the breadth their experience. While asking the person to describe that would also suffice, it saves a lot of time if people can let their name serve as a placeholder. 3) some people are quite understated in their comments, others more pedantic. Evaluating how strongly held someone's opinion is often involves knowing their style. Philip Guenther _______________________________________________ Ietf@xxxxxxxx https://www1.ietf.org/mailman/listinfo/ietf