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Re: It's a personal statement (Re: On the tradition of I-D "Acknowledgements" sections)

2013-03-25 11:44:40


On 3/25/2013 9:35 AM, Carsten Bormann wrote:
The WG can decide to have a "contributors" section or whatever it
wants.

The acknowledgements section, however, is, very much like the street
address, the authors' thing, and entirely up to their conscience.


Sorry, no.

It is not a collection of objective data, like the author contact information. It is a value statement about people.

Citing a 'contributors' section is invention on-the-fly. It's not irrational, but it is not established IETF practice.

Again, we don't have a current problem.  So let's not fix it...

Most authors are actually editors. They are the working group's intelligent pen. Even when the author is the primary source of creation in the working group, the point behind having working groups is for the document to be a product of that group, not of the author.

That authors and working groups often misunderstand this is a different concern, but it's important that we not institutionalize more independence of authors.

For example would it be reasonable for an author to have the acknowledgements section say:

This document was produced in spite of the disruptive and damaging contributions of Participant X and Participant Y.


d/
--
 Dave Crocker
 Brandenburg InternetWorking
 bbiw.net

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