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
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