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(_at_)jck(_dot_)com> 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