On 6/12/2013 2:28 AM, Jari Arkko wrote:
In Russ' case I took the message to mean that he reviewed it as an
expert on the technology. It would probably have helped if he said
whether he only reviewed it for correctness or if he was also making
a statement about the technology being needed in his opinion. I would
have appreciated his opinion on it. That being said, it feels kind of
odd to explicitly say things if you have nothing to say about the
matter.
The act of posting something means they feel that they do have something
to say. That's actually not the issue here.
The issue here is how fully the posting should explain itself.
When we write, we make assumptions about the reader. Russ talking to
you, Jari, permits an especially rich set of assumptions to be easy and
correct. You know each other. For informal exchange, that's not only
acceptable, it's essential. The alternative is pathologically stilted
and unworkably inefficient.
We often write things in the IETF -- including formal things -- as if
they are only for folks we know.
But that's not really an appropriate model for a formal standards
process. When contributing to the formal parts of a standards process,
we need to assume the writer and the reader don't know each other,
because they usually don't. The fact that some do is actually
distracting.
Write for the record; the record does not know the background or intent
or implications of the writer. Neither will a random reader, now or
later. So make them explicit.
The fact that you, Jari, are still left with a guess about what Russ's
comment fully meant should make obvious just how important it is for
folks who post comments to provide context for their comment, where
'context' means demonstrating an understanding of what is being
commented on and fully explaining what our comment means.
d/
--
Dave Crocker
Brandenburg InternetWorking
bbiw.net