Re: Bad/Good ideas and damage control by experienced participants

[Wes Hardaker <[e-mail]>]

Keith Moore <[e-mail]> writes:

> Hopelessly naive proposals are a big time sink. Sure, politeness goes
> a long way. But politely responding to a hopelessly naive proposal in
> an effective way requires trying to find some merit in it, so that the
> author of that proposal will know you've actually taken the time to
> understand it. And that's actually a lot more work than reviewing a
> potentially useful Internet-Draft. Shouldn't most of our effort be
> spent on documents that actually have some potential?  Especially
> given that there are already too many documents to read?
> 
> Given that, it's not surprising that a lot of proposals get rudely and
> quickly rejected. Even when some of them have merit.
> 
> I'm not saying it's right that good proposals get rudely and quickly
> rejected, I'm saying that I understand why it happens and it's not
> only because of arrogance.

A nice aspect about the IETF is that new drafts and proposals require
others to agree to its merits and approach before it will be adopted.
Thus, if someone doesn't have the time to write a constructive review of
an idea, then the saying "if you don't have something nice to say, then
don't say anything at all" actually works.  This is a potentially less
demoralizing approach than responding with statements like "this is a
stupid idea".  Furthermore, if someone else does take the effort to
write a solid, well-reasoned argument about why an approach lacks the
necessary technical merit, then responding in that thread with "this
sums up my concerns with the approach too" requires only a small number
of words and still registers proper disinterest or concern.

We have a process for dealing with ideas that do not get enough
attention: WG chairs have the job of explaining to draft authors that
their draft failed to achieve a necessary level of support to be
adopted.

-- 
Wes Hardaker
USC/ISI