Re: IESG Statement on surprised authors

[Benoit Claise <[e-mail]>]

Hi John,

Yes indeed, there are many different (corner) cases, specifically 
related to the acknowledgment section.
An IESG statement must be concise, which makes it impossible to take 
into account all potential situations.
You are right that, in the end, it's a judgment call.

Removing the acknowledgment parentheses can be done, but this would 
dilute the "misleading in terms of support" message.

Regards, Benoit
>
> --On Saturday, May 30, 2015 08:54 +0200 Benoit Claise
> <[e-mail]> wrote:
>
>> One reason why a pointer to the surprised acknowledgment was
>> added is for statements such as
>>
>>      Thanks to <insert names> for their valuable comments and
>> support on
>>      the initial idea of this document
> Benoit,
>
> Understood and I had guessed at that cause and intent.  The
> difficulty is that we have at least four other cases, only one
> of which I don't believe has actually occurred.
> Yet.:
>
> 	(i) Joe Blow Contributes large blocks of text to a
> 	document.  The IPR rules, at least as some of us
> 	understand them, require that his Contribution be
> 	acknowledged.  Joe doesn't like some or all of the
> 	resulting document, which still includes his text, and
> 	insists that he is surprised and that his name should be
> 	removed.
> 	
> 	(ii) Sally Bloggs says some things on the WG mailing
> 	list that are sufficiently confused and/or outrageous
> 	that the WG concludes the document needs considerable
> 	clarification.  While Sally does not provide the
> 	clarifying text, she does make comments on it.  Sally is
> 	still in the rough relative to WG and IETF consensus.
> 	The authors conclude that Sally's comments resulted in
> 	considerable improvements to the document that would not
> 	have occurred otherwise and choose to acknowledge it.
> 	Sally would like her name removed.
> 	
> 	(iii) The authors include a broad acknowledgment of the
> 	WG instead of, or in addition to, listing particular
> 	names.  Consensus in the WG was very rough and remains
> 	controversial and some of those who are in the rough
> 	insist that the WG acknowledgment be removed,
> 	drastically rewritten, or that they be excluded by name.
> 	
> 	(iv) Someone mouthed off on the WG list or during Last
> 	Call and then insists that they were surprised to not be
> 	acknowledged and insist that their names be added.
>
> Coming back to your example, note the huge difference between it
> and
>
> 	Thanks to <insert names> for their valuable comments and
> 	support during the development of this document even
> 	though they did not fully agree with the WG's conclusion
>
> That may or may not be appropriate, but it is much less likely
> to be deliberately misleading.
>
> As Carsten noted, there is clearly a principle that one should
> not lie in documents.  I don't know whether the overall text
> would be improved by saying that explicitly.  But, as far as the
> acknowledgments are concerned and very much unlike the "false
> claim of authorship" situation, there are many cases and a lot
> of them involve judgment calls.  I suggest that the IESG should
> either remove the comment (and address the issues elsewhere as
> needed) or put in more language, either opening and exploring
> the can of worms or making sure that the acknowledgment case
> being referred to is appropriately clearly-defined and narrow.
> I also suggest that either of the latter two will be
> time-consuming so, if the IESG is anxious to get this out
> quickly, the pragmatic solution may be to remove the
> parenthetical note and, if desired, include a forward-pointing
> statement or reference about the acknowledgment cases.
>
> best,
>      john
>
> .
>