Re: The RFC Acknowledgement

[Barry Leiba <[e-mail]>]

A couple of points here:

>> In practice, that depends on the judgment the document author; does
>> the document author feel that you have made a "significant"
>> contribution to the document?
>
> I agree that it is responsibility of owners or authors. In IETF the
> I-D may be a WG I-D so the group work together to feel what is best,

This actually varies.  Working groups will sometimes direct
authors/editors on what should be in the Acknowledgments section, but
more often it's left to the judgment of the authors/editors -- it's
their section.  And, yes, authors sometimes include family, departed
colleagues, and even software ("This document was prepared using
xml2rfc version x.y.z.").

> Also depend on *why* the acknowledge section. Authors don't only ACK
> because of significant contributions
...
> In IETF it is all about discussions and comments
> for its I-Ds and RFCs, new comers' participation make the discussions
> valueable in my opinion,

Read carefully what Dale said: he did not say "contributed significant
text", but "made a significant contribution".  We very often
acknowledge people who gave particularly useful reviews, had
particularly important roles in discussions, contributed ideas, and
such.  It's about how the document got to where it is, so, yes,
discussions and comments, and newbies as well as grey-beards.

>> My belief is that one must participate in the IETF fairly intensively
>> for six months to a year before one can gain a reputation as being a
>> knowledgeable contributor.  After all, most of the people authoring
>> documents have been participating for several years -- and they
>> already know each other.  Before you have gained that reputation, it
>> may be difficult to get people to pay attention to your contributions,
>> even if they are objectively valuable.  I describe the rule in the
>> IETF as "Everyone may speak; not everyone is listened to."  You need
>> to prove yourself to be a person worth listening to.
>
> I agree, but we should n't ignore voices of new participants, and
> don't ignore people that are listening and never participate.

Absolutely, and no one here purposefully ignores the voices of new
participants.  Dale is speaking not about what *should* happen, but
what our human nature is: we naturally pay closer attention to people
we already know and respect, whose contributions have previously been
shown to be valuable.  New participants who understand this and join
the community with an eye toward showing their value in that way (as
Dale noted, see RFC 4144) are accepted more quickly.  In an ideal
world, if the first word you post to a mailing list is useful, you
should be acknowledged, praised, and accepted.  Normal human social
interactions work against that, unfortunately.

> Your right, however, just to add that I don't participate in IETF to
> make reputation, because I think it is not a place for reputation, I
> try to participate to volunteer in the Internet Community to add to my
> Internet knowledge and others,

You aren't seeking reputation in the world at large, no... but you
must develop a good reputation among the other IETF participants --
that's what Dale's saying.  It's that human nature thing.

You want to get to a place where people say, "When AB says something,
pay attention, because he's usually right."  We all have people like
that in our areas of expertise, and we all know who they are.

Barry