Subject: RE: LC on draft-mankin-pub-req-08.txt

From: "Gray, Eric" <[email-masked]>
Date: Thu, 1 Jun 2006 18:00:41 -0400

Bob,

	Weirdness?

	No part of the RFC Editor's "job" has ever involved 
deliberate modification of text that reflects a carefully 
crafted compromise position.  In the past, when any such 
modification has occurred inadvertently, it would usually 
have been reversed during an Auth48.  I believe what we're 
trying to do is define what the RFC Editor does already in 
terms that might allow us to off-load part of that task.

	So, NO I am not saying "Don't do your job most of the
time" - what I am saying is that "restraint should be used 
in this task to avoid doing more than the task requires." 

	To make this something we can look at more objectively,
let's look at a different example of the same usage.  Surely, 
you would agree that a statement such as - 

"People should refrain from allowing their passion for precise
 terminology usage to prevent essential communication from 
 ever taking place"

- is a far cry from -

"Nit-picking is prohibited."

--
Eric

--> -----Original Message-----
--> From: Bob Braden [mailto:[email-masked]] 
--> Sent: Thursday, June 01, 2006 5:17 PM
--> To: [email-masked]; [email-masked]
--> Cc: [email-masked]
--> Subject: RE: LC on draft-mankin-pub-req-08.txt
--> 
--> 
-->  
-->   *> 
-->   *> 	Bearing in mind that asking someone to "refrain from" 
-->   *> doing something is a far cry from "prohibiting" it, see my 
-->   *> comment above.
-->   *> 
--> 
--> Sorry, I don't get that fine distinction.  Are you saying, "Don't
--> do your job most of the time"?  Wierdness abounds here.
--> 
--> Bob Braden
--> 

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---

From: "Lucy E. Lynch" <[email-masked]>
Date: Fri, 2 Jun 2006 10:14:40 -0700 (PDT)

> terminology usage to prevent essential communication from

Eric -

I think your vision of what at editor does may be a bit limited here. 
You seem to be describing the zone between proofreading and copy 
editing (correcting grammar, conforming to accepted style, reference 
checking, etc.) but you're missing a much more important piece - 
comprehensive editing. In the IETF case a document may begin with 
language crafting at the WG level, move through last call, gen-art 
reviews, and the IESG and still need major fine tuning for basic 
readability. I'll agree with you that editorial changes to a text should 
be made with an eye to intent of the authors with regard to the 
*technical* content but the back-and-forth of final editorial review 
should catch any substantive changes in the authors intent.

We sometimes do a good job at the layer of technical/peer review, 
however, I've seen far to many documents that may be technically sound 
but are poorly structured and poorly written. In addition, drafts are 
often pitched to a reader already well up to speed with internal terms 
so that the word choices are loaded in ways that make the document 
unreadable to outsiders. Abstracts and definitions of terms are often 
sketchy at best.

Pressure is applied at every level inside the IETF to advance any 
given document and we NEED the combination of comprehensive editing, 
copy editing, and proofreading at the RFC-Editor level in order to 
produce a readable and reliable document series.

I'm with Joel here, I *want* our documents to be well written and I 
believe that improving the readability of a document is a major part of 
what we currently expect from our RFC-Editor process.

- Lucy

-- 
Lucy E. Lynch 				Academic User Services
Computing Center			University of Oregon
llynch  @darkwing.uoregon.edu		(541) 346-1774