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Re: Language editing

2013-05-03 11:27:44

On May 2, 2013, at 9:47 PM 5/2/13, Dave Crocker <dhc(_at_)dcrocker(_dot_)net> 
wrote:

On 5/2/2013 4:13 PM, Peter Saint-Andre wrote:
Instead of imposing even more work on the RFC Editor team, I suggest
that you find someone in the WG, in your company, in the IETF
community (etc.) to help with the language issues. I did this recently
with a document in one of the WGs where I'm active and it worked quite
well (especially if the document is under source control and you can
just send a patch).


+1

This goes beyond the simple-but-expensive matter of having the work done by 
the RFC Editor.

With every opportunity, we should move work to the people who want its result.

Dave, I agree with you and you make a very important point, that applies 
broadly to this conversation.

In particular, it should be the responsibility of the interested parties to 
engage community support, and it should be the responsibility of the community 
to put effort into producing a document that meets requirements of basic 
writing quality.


IETF work that is successful has community support.  The community wants it 
and demonstrates this by working on it.  That can (and I think should) 
include ensuring basic writing quality.

If you'll allow me to dive into process issues and solution engineering 
briefly, these writing quality issues should be caught well before the document 
reaches the IESG, in the abstract to ensure that the responsibility (and the 
work) in producing publishable documents rests with the people who want the 
document published, and pragmatically because a DISCUSS position of "returned 
for improvement in writing quality" is at the edge of what can be handled 
through routine processes.


If the community does not have enough interest in the work to write it well, 
it has bigger problems that won't be remedied by more RFC Editor effort...

Yup.


d/

- Ralph


-- 
Dave Crocker
Brandenburg InternetWorking
bbiw.net


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