Re: [Tools-discuss] Chinese name order versus surname and initial attributes in <author>

[Toerless Eckert <[e-mail]>]

In the first place it would be good to figure out if we can
come up with the list of things someone is expected to provide
to the IETF community if that person wants to be correctly
addressed by the community. Whether in publishing or email.

a) Identity pronoun
b) How to address the person in informal communications (email)
   given name only ? Surname ? surname-given-name ? ...
c) How to address the person in information communications
   when there is a need for further disambiguation (as in JohnA...JohnZ).

d) How to address the person in places where the IETF may be
under some legal constraints, which i guess is RFC publishing.
Aka: Sufficient good faith effort for IETF not being made
responsible in any possible legal proceedins like IPR litigation
(Your John Doe does not exist, IETF is violating copy and trademarks
 in this RFC, please pay $$$$$$).

IMHO, d) mostly likely comes for free when we had a)-c) in before,
and i for once do regularily struggle with a)-c) for people
whom i have not met in at least voice conferencing, but only
encounter in IETF email threads. 

Alternatively, we can simply address IETF'ler in email by 
the first RFC number in which that person is the first
named author. But that is probably discriminatory ;-)

Of course, i am also happy to address other IETF'er purely
by "rfcXXXX siad"
I am happy to address


On Tue, Jul 27, 2021 at 03:11:44AM +0200, Carsten Bormann wrote:
> > 
> > (The meta-problem is that we seem to be perpetually behind on fixing our XML
> > specifications. At least, that's what it appears to me)
> 
> If we try to do semantic markup, and don’t think the semantics through, we'll need to do endless fixing.
> 
> In a similar case, postal addresses, we are in the process of deciding to get away from semantic markup and let everyone format their addresses the way they like them.  May seem like a regression, or like a liberation, depending on your perspective.
> 
> Personal names are really hard to get right [1].
> RFCs make that much harder than it needs to be by employing initials, which are a computation on personal names that only makes sense if you don’t care about most of the people in the world.
> If we got rid of that, we could reduce the need for semantic markup of names, and everything would be wonderful.  Depending on your perspective.
> 
> Grüße, Carsten
> 
> [1]: https://www.kalzumeus.com/2010/06/17/falsehoods-programmers-believe-about-names/
> Read on at least until you get down to number 40 :-)
> 
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