Hi,
On Mon, Dec 30, 2013 at 04:18:07PM -0800, S Moonesamy wrote:
"Reduce the heat and increase the light"
meaning of that sentence. In my opinion it is better to keep the
guideline as clear and simple as possible.
I'm really torn about that decision. Let me try to state why and
leave you to do as you wish.
On the one hand, it is indisputably important to be plain and clear in
communication, particularly if one wishes to be understood by a very
wide audience.
On the other hand, part of the goal of the document, as I understand
it, is to bridge some of the gaps between new participants to the IETF
and longer-time participants. (If we were a stable and mostly
homogeneous culture, we wouldn't need to write down our norms;
they'd simply be shared values.) Part of that bridge needs to be
constructed, I think, with illustration as well as statement.
Many people around here seem to like analogies and metaphors. That
is, perhaps, partly because of the expressive power they offer, partly
because the structure of language (maybe all language, if we believe
Lakoff and Johnson), and partly because a lot of the time we are
reasoning about stuff that isn't exactly either invented or understood
yet. As we grope towards shared understanding and better analysis of
what we're trying to specify, the chances are pretty good that we will
end up using analogies and metaphors to find our way.
The analogy in RFC 3184 is, I think, especially apt, both because of
the play on "heated dispute" and "illuminating conversation" and
because it turns on a common idiomatic English expression. I'm aware
of how great a barrier idiom can be -- after years out of practice, it
once again takes me a great deal of effort to understand a Québecois
conversation. But that is part of the expressive power of language
(as opposed to, say, code). I'm not sure that we're going to make
everything clearer by dispensing with idiom and metaphor in our work.
Best regards,
A
--
Andrew Sullivan
ajs(_at_)anvilwalrusden(_dot_)com