Re: AUTH48 and "Guidance for NIST Staff on Using Inclusive Language in Documentary Standards"

[S Moonesamy <[e-mail]>]

Hi John,
At 11:38 AM 05-06-2025, John Scudder wrote:
>I don't see where Q says that [1]. It's not in 
>the reply from Jean [2] either, which quotes the 
>standard question that the RPC asks for all 
>documents during AUTH48 and therefore is presumably verbatim what Q was asked:

There was a question some time back to make the 
AUTH48 publicly accessible and a decision was 
taken on that in or around February 2022.  The 
email in which the script was mentioned is 
archived at 
https://mailarchive.ietf.org/arch/msg/auth48archive/Yw3JluJcYFE_jc6TDId0fur13JE/

>For that matter, I don't know what "the script" 
>you refer to might be. (Given the context of our 
>discussion, the most obvious reading of "the 
>script" is that you imagine there's some 
>automation, a  la idnits, that's supposed to do this work.)

Yes.

>Insofar as the question you’ve represented 
>isn't the one Q was asked [3], I don't think 
>it's possible to come to any conclusion about "œefficiency".
>
>If it would be correct to rewrite your last 
>sentence as … find out whether procedural steps 
>1-3 might have missed … then at least I can 
>understand what you're saying. I still disagree 
>with your conclusion that it's "inefficient", though, for two reasons:
>:
>
>First, every one of the parties in your list is 
>a fallabile human (or group of humans). Things 
>that can be automated, should be, and then one 
>might complain about "inefficiency" if the 
>authors are asked to repeat the work. What we 
>have left, can't be automated (or hasn't been). 
>Making judgement calls about terminology is inherently non-automatable [4].

I agree that it is a matter of context (re. judgement calls).

>Second, none of the parties in your list has 
>been tasked with ensuring the stylistic 
>integrity of the document as a primary 
>responsibility. Many people make a good-faith 
>attempt, but in the end, we have a professional 
>staff for that: the RFC Editor. Indeed, more 
>than once over the last fiew years, the argument 
>has been made (on this list, even) that Area 
>Directors are doing too much editorial review, 
>and should back off and leave it to the 
>professionals. In particular, as AD I heard more 
>than once that it wasn't my job to address 
>readability and style issues in the documents I 
>reviewed, other than the most grossly disqualifying ones.
>
>In summary, I don't think there's something 
>broken here [5], so let's not fix it.

Once in a while, I might notice a nit when I read 
a draft.  I would send an email to the author if 
we interacted previously.  Sometimes, I forget 
about it as it can be a bit distracting.  There 
can be different opinions on the depth and breath of a review or readability.

Regards,
S. Moonesamy