Subject: [edu-discuss] suggestion for explanation of ``IETF culture''

From: Peter Koch <[email-masked]>
Date: Wed, 10 Nov 2004 22:28:36 +0100

Dear EDU team,

in September, ISOC.DE sponsored an event in Frankfurt, DE where local/regional
people active or interested in the IETF had an exchange of ideas and
experiences.

Amongst other issues, many of the participants felt that, although as Europeans
probably being in a relatively comfortable situation, newcomers sometimes have
difficulties understanding the "culture" of the meetings and discussions.
This is not news, of course. One particular suggestion was that
the EDU team or whoever feels competent might want to collect some of the
jargon used in face to face meetings or on mailing lists. We'd be happy
to contribute the key words (well, maybe also the explanation, although that's
likely better done by a native speaker; however, it might be interesting to
learn what a non-native speaker thinks things mean ;-)

To cut a long story short, examples of terms are 'red herring', 'rathole
discussion', 'kitchen sink {approach}'. While some of those may be found
in a good dictionary, there are often enough connotations specific to the
IETF environment, history and folklore.
Is this list appropriate to start an effort to get this started? Comments
and contributions welcome.

Thanks,
  Peter

PS: Although it might lead to an ongoing effort, the questions raised seem to
    fit into the scope of FYI 17 (The Tao), which appears to be in the process
    of being updated.

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From: "Spencer Dawkins" <[email-masked]>
Date: Sun, 21 Nov 2004 07:45:44 -0600

Hi, Peter,

> difficulties understanding the "culture" of the meetings and 

I'd just like to echo this thought. At IETF 59 in Seoul, we did the 
first non-English "Intro to the IETF" tutorial on Sunday afternoon, as 
well as an English-language version, so Changhoon Kim and I spent a 
couple of hours on Saturday evening going over the tutorial finding 
and editing phrases that didn't translate well into Korean (to be 
honest, there was a little bit of translating from IETF-ese into 
English, too!).

I think this kind of work is worth it - I didn't get an exact count 
from Changhoon's session, but the large room was filled to capacity 
and the hotel staff were bringing in chairs - maybe 250 people for the 
Korean-language session?

> and contributions welcome.

Margaret/Avri can answer the "in-scope" question here, but I sure 
can't think of a better list off the top of my head, especially since 
Tao is now in-scope for the EDU team...

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From: Scott W Brim <[email-masked]>
Date: Sun, 21 Nov 2004 14:01:20 -0500

> and contributions welcome.

I think it's a great idea.  To stimulate contributions, perhaps you
could make it a wiki and periodically announce statistics (how many new
terms last month, etc.)?  

My favorite problem along these lines was one time when I said "the
peasants are revolting" :-).

If you set it up, I'll contribute a few terms.

Thanks ... Scott