Re: RFC abbreviations list

[Donald Eastlake <[e-mail]>]

I agree with Joel. Standards document in all SDOs with which I am
familiar vastly overuse acronyms.

I never consult the RFC Editor abbreviations list. I just try to apply
common sense. I don't spell out things like IP, IETF, UDP, TCP, etc.
but quite frequently spell out things that turn out to be on the RFC
Editor abbreviations list. Occasionally the office of the RFC Editor
or an AD points this out to me and I just push back and say that I
think it is better to be clearer and more explicit. I have never been
forced to use an acronym in the IETF.

Thanks,
Donald
===============================
 Donald E. Eastlake 3rd   [phone] (cell)
 2386 Panoramic Circle, Apopka, FL 32703 USA
 [e-mail]

On Sat, Jul 25, 2020 at 6:30 PM Joel M. Halpern <[e-mail]> wrote:
>
> The ADs do not own the RFC Editor list of abbreviations which do not
> need expansion.
> As a first approximation, as long as an abbreviation is considered new,
> it is extremely unlikely to be added by the RSE (or equivalent person).
> The point of that list is to list things that are so well known even
> outside the narrow field of use that it is reasonable to expect people
> to know the abbreviation.
>
> Personally, I wouldn't care if that list were reduced to zero.  Out goal
> is to write clear documents.  expanding abbreviations / acornyms on
> first use is a good idea.  I do understand that we do not bother with
> things like IP, TCP, HTTP.  So having a list is useful.  But if people
> complain about how hard it is to get anything on the list, I will push
> to remove it entirely.
>
> Yours,
> Joel
>
> On 7/25/2020 6:15 PM, Toerless Eckert wrote:
> > If we can put the most important new standards into RFC abbreviation list
> > even after i tell an AD twice, then i don't think we can deal with
> > new technical terms in the organization any better.
> >
> > On Sat, Jul 25, 2020 at 11:34:43PM +0200, Carsten Bormann wrote:
> >> On 2020-07-25, at 23:04, Toerless Eckert <[e-mail]> wrote:
> >>>
> >>> For exmple i have to observe a real bad execution on evolving the
> >>> RFC abbreviations list, and every time i pointed to problems,
> >>> they where not fixed, and ADs did not bother to pick up the problem.
> >>
> >> True.  One of these ???medium importance??? issues???  Hard to get attention for them.
> >>
> >> I think we need a calendar to attend to them once a year or so.
> >>
> >> Grüße, Carsten
> >
>