Re: IESG Statement on surprised authors

[John C Klensin <[e-mail]>]

--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