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Re: registries and designated experts

2012-06-15 12:48:11
oh boy...

On 6/15/2012 3:57 AM, Graham Klyne wrote:
On 12/06/2012 15:56, Dave Crocker wrote:
It's almost inevitable that many designated experts will, in fact,
act as gatekeepers.
...
The effect may sometimes be similar to being a gatekeeper but,
speaking for myself, that's not how I see my role.

Herein lies the core problem with these types of discussions: Most participants use themselves as the metric.

Designing human processes requires consideration of other folk, not ourselves. Other folk display widely varying behaviors. They have less information and education on the topic than current participants. They have moods. They have distractions. They have biases.

In other words, real-world, human processes are "noisier" than we tend to design for.

When looking for factors to consider, a posting with "here's how I behave" can be extremely helpful. When looking for what can go wrong, it actually tends to undermine the exercise, IMO.

Note that this is not about diligence.  It is about typical human vagaries.


My experience is that no amount of review completely bullet-proofs a
 spec against misinterpretation. So we do the best we can.

The second sentence is such a natural choice, given the first. What it misses is that "the best" often means excessive hassle. That is, very poor cost/benefit tradeoff analysis.

Quality control processes can and do help. Carried to excess, they make the activity more effort than it is worth.

In the face of being unable to ensure perfect bullet-proofing, we often think that we need to put in more effort. In fact what is often appropriate is /less/ formal bullet-proofing and trusting market forces to do the rest, since they will anyhow.

d/


--
 Dave Crocker
 Brandenburg InternetWorking
 bbiw.net

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