On Sun, 2013-03-24 at 22:23 -0400, Joel M. Halpern wrote: > I think I at least partly disagree. The acknowledgements section of > RFCs was not, and to the best of my knowledge is not, concerned with > capturing the history of where specific changes or ideas came from. It > ought to be concerned with giving credit to folks who made particularly > large, but not authorship level, contributions to the document. > +1
.. and such contributions may well be reviews that don't change the substance of the document or add new ideas but result in improvments to the expression of the ideas or catch mistakes. These can be just as vital as extra ideas to making a successful RFC. IMO it is vital that for reviewing to be successful it has to be 'ego-free'. The reviewer shouldn't be aiming to catch the authors out or push his/her prejudices into the document but rather to collectively improve the document. So 'ego-free' should mean that the reviewer is looking for a better document and not a 'puff' in the acknowledgements. Yes, it is nice to get an acknowledgement of your review work but I'm not going to go beat up the authors if I don't get it. In practice, the reviews that are perhaps least likely to be acknowledged are the ones which say 'I read it: it was well written and it looked good to me.' They are very nearly as much work as the ones that say 'It's broken because...'! As regards 'history': RFCs record 'state' and not history. That isn't to say that recording history in some other place than the fallible memories of participants and fragmented threads in mailing lists wouldn't be advantageous not least in avoiding wheels being reinvented and failures being repeated. But I have never been involved in a project that actually even tried to keep a 'design diary' or similar document. Probably, mea culpa sometimes! Whatever, it doesn't belong in the resulting RFC. Regards, Elwyn
