I wasn't offended either, but I can see how some people might have felt. Moving on, what I do believe is that many i-d's could benefit from a review by a linguist. This role, IMO, is different from the role of an editor. The linguist doesn't need to have any technical background. He is more like a syntax / semantic verifier. It's common practice in other fields. I know this idea raises a host of issues, like for example that it will probably cost the IETF money, and that it's unfeasible to linguist-check every single i-d. But maybe a reasonable compromise can be found. Like the Gen-ART review, maybe the WG chairs or the Gen-ART reviewers themselves could flag some document for 'Linguist-Review', and have them second checked by an appropriate linguist. Whether the original authors were native English speakers or not would be immaterial, the document would be flagged when an otherwise sound document suffers from language issues that could hinder implementation. Apologies for the unorganized email, the idea took form as I was responding to John's original email. Warm regards, ~Carlos (married to a picky linguist) On 3/12/13 4:21 PM, Marc Blanchet wrote: > > Le 2013-03-12 à 14:45, John C Klensin <john-ietf@xxxxxxx> a écrit : > >> Hi >> >> At last night's plenary, I raised some related issues about the >> difficulties posed by the interactions between current systems >> for developing and editing documents working groups through the >> approval and publication processes and the growing number of >> people in the community who do sound technical work but who >> cannot express themselves easily and well in clear technical >> English. In one of those comments, I suggested that the issues >> were likely to continue to get more important as the IETF >> diversified to including participants from areas we haven't seen >> before and mentioned likely increased numbers of participants >> from Mars. My intent was to abstract the problem as much as >> possible to avoid even the appearance of singling out any one >> country or region as the source of the issue. I don't believe >> that is the case and have observed (and did last night) that we >> have first-language speakers of English who write good and bad >> technical English as well as many first-language speakers of >> other languages who write better technical English than the >> native-speaker average. >> >> In any event, I've gotten some feedback that some people thought >> I was identifying them as Martians and were offended. > > I was not offended, but I was in strong disagreement with your second comment that by having a co-editor assigned to help, it would make these "Martians" second-class citizens in the IETF. I completly disagree. Everybody needs help, for improving whatever: technical, writing, QA, etc... That does not make someone a second-class citizen. > > Closing and moving forward. > > Marc. > >> No >> offense was intended and I used the "Martian" terminology >> precisely to avoid that possibility. I obviously failed and >> apologize to anyone who didn't hear or understand what I was >> trying to say in the way I intended to say it. I'll try to >> watch my choice of vocabulary even more in the future. >> >> john >