On 09/05/12 09:12, Michael Richardson {quigon} allegedly wrote:
> What I am writing about is that I think that we a problem with
> transfer students... those who did their september elsewhere, and
> have now switched schools for the winter semester. It doesn't occur
> to them that they don't know how the IETF works... it must work like
> other SDOs, they think.
Yes, and within WGs there are attempts to teach culture. However, the
IETF is an amalgamation of its participants, and the IETF culture
should be able to adapt. Like any technical architecture, the basic
framework of the IETF should be robust and flexible enough that it can
adapt to unforeseen inputs.
> Worse of all, I think, many of these people have doing what they
> thought was email for around a decade, (yes, using Outlook), they
> have no idea how email works, nor do they even know there is another
> interface. They simply do not know what happens to their
> mis-formatted emails, and why often this results in people being
> unable to listens to them in the mailing list.
We know how to deal with this in our friends and relatives every day,
and we can learn to do it in the IETF. On occasion I've reorganized
received outlook mail into the form I wanted to respond to. I did
once get asked "why don't you just put your response at the top like
everybody else" :-) But anyway we can be lenient in what we receive.
The smart ones will adapt, themselves, so we won't have to do so for
long with them.
> I don't have an answer to this; I'm not even sure there is a
> problem; I have a problem of writing too long emails.
You can get help for that.
> Let me suggest that at the IETF, where the mailing list is king, you
> can't join the Elite if you can't quote email properly.
> Maybe I'm also concerned because many in the former "elite" have
> moved to Apple Mail, and it seems that it is bug compatible with
> Outlook in it's assumption that format=flowed is the default, an act
> which destroys email quoting, and therefore discussion.
and if you figure out the right settings in Thunderbird please let me
know.
On 09/07/12 14:12, Melinda Shore allegedly wrote:> On 9/5/12 5:12 AM,
Michael Richardson {quigon} wrote:
> This is a great note, Michael, and now that I'm attending again I
> have to say that the changes are not at all subtle. Processes are
> more formal in part to protect the organization from legal threats,
> in part because the boom in internetiness has increased the number
> of bodies and therefore the need to negotiate both relationships and
> space, and in part because of the reasons you've identified.
It's also a reflex of a technologist mind. If there's uncertainty,
put in a procedure.
Scott (writing this in emacs)