Toerless, SM, and others who commented on the importance of recognising people
who made contributions: I fully agree, of course. Giving credit for
contributions, be it about being the developer of a major protocol, having your
name on the author list, or being mentioned in the acknowledgments is one of
the currencies that help draw people into doing work at the IETF. Along with
people's need to get an internetworking problem solved, of course. And the
needs for their software to interwork with others. And the needs of their users
being met…
Anyway, back to acknowledgments. We should, of course, give credit for
contributions. I hope we all think about this long and hard when we write our
documents, and do the right thing. Erring on the side of being inclusive is
probably a better strategy for most cases.
The issue in this case though was where to draw the line. As an example, for my
documents, I've mostly used a strategy where I acknowledge the significant
contributions. I've occasionally used another approach, essentially listing
everyone who had done any work relating to the document, no matter how small. I
think either model is defensible, but there will always be a question of what
contributions meet the criteria for being included. Should I acknowledge
someone if they post a review that said everything is OK? A comment on the
mailing list that they support this document? A suggestion that did not result
in a change in the document? A minor editorial fix? A question? An argument? We
do not have a definition of what kinds of things should result in your name
being listed in the acknowledgments. And I don't think we should formalise that
either. It is a better model to have the authors make common sense decisions
about these matters. And, as with any topic, if there is a m!
istake there are several opportunities to rectify the situation if after
analysis it seems that a mistake was made. But only if it were a clear mistake
- I think it would be a bad model if the IESG or someone else were to
micromanage this. The documents are WG's documents and author's documents.
Jari