Re: The RFC Acknowledgement

[[e-mail] (Dale R. Worley)]

> From: Abdussalam Baryun <[e-mail]>
> 
> I sometimes feel discouraged to participate in any world work if the
> process does not involve my existance, just used with ignoring ACK of
> the reviewers. IMO any comment has value to the authors (e.g. some
> think only experts' comments are important to ACK) and to IETF,
> otherwise, we may delete valuable ACKs in IETF, which is not right.

Hi Abdussalam,

I believe that you are examining this problem from the point of view
of a reviewer (and possible contributor) to a document, rather than
the point of view of a document author.  That is, your question is
"When can I expect a document author to include an Acknowledgment of
my review?"

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?

In general, even if an outside observer would say that you contributed
significantly to a document, it can appear impolite to explicitly
request that your name be added to the Acknowledgments section.

> A participant that still did not complete a year working for IETF, but
> trying to continue :)

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.

Much useful advice on this subject is contained in RFC 4144, "How to
Gain Prominence and Influence in Standards Organizations".

My experience is that one can learn how to get more respect in an
organization by occasionally asking more experienced people how to do
so.  One method that works in most organizations is to volunteer for
the "thankless tasks".  In any organization, there are tasks that are
acknowledged as necessary, they are unpleasant to do, and people who
do it are not rewarded commensurately for doing them.  (Reviewing
drafts is one of them in the IETF.)  However, if you develop a
reputation as a person who does these tasks, it will increase the
respect you receive.

Dale