Subject: RE: Egoless documents

From: "Eric Burger" <[email-masked]>
Date: Wed, 28 Sep 2005 09:04:36 -0400

Last I looked, the names on the front page are the EDITORS, explicitly
not AUTHORS.

That is *why* we have the Contributors' section.

If people want their name in lights, they should strive to be a
contributor.

In reality, the vast majority of documents (IMO) have exactly one and
only one editor.  A handful of documents are a real collaboration.
Maybe I can count off on one hand where there REALLY were more than two
authors (I'm thinking 3261 here).

Let's use positive reinforcement.  Encourage folks to realize that they
can say, "I wrote X" if they appear in the Contributors' section.  (They
will say they wrote X if they were a 5% author, so let's be realistic.)

-----Original Message-----
From: [email-masked] [mailto:[email-masked]] On
Behalf Of Jari Arkko
Sent: Tuesday, September 27, 2005 4:50 PM
To: Tom-PT Taylor
Cc: [email-masked]
Subject: Re: Egoless documents

Tom-PT Taylor wrote:

> What does one do about the case where a 'bis' edition is being 
> produced and the original authors have nothing to do with it?  Leave 
> the original authors or put new ones?

Depends on case. Did bis version change 1% or 80%?
Was it a major invention that you now maintain for
clearer language? Or are you adding a lot of new functions?
Maybe also depends on the number of authors. Are
the authors still interested and reachable?

Most of the documents that I have seen retain the original
author list.

--Jari

---

From: Mark Allman <[email-masked]>
Date: Wed, 28 Sep 2005 11:00:31 -0400

> If people want their name in lights, they should strive to be a

I wasn't going to wade into this, but ... a few points ...

  * Do WG chairs really have any idea how much of a document is edited
    by each author?  I certainly am not that up on documents in my WG
    that I'd have any idea if someone wrote 20%.  So, I am not sure I
    can use that stick.

    In fact, on documents I am an author on I am not sure I could pin
    this down in some cases.

  * What about documents whereby chairs bring extra energy to move
    things along.  The TCPM WG had the situation whereby the very active
    editor of a particular document dropped mostly out of touch for over
    a year - through no fault of his own (he told us he was going to
    drop out and every few months did check in).  We brought in some
    additional energy to finish the document.  Not sure these folk wrote
    20% of the text.  Should they be listed?  (They are.)

    (The flip side is that I have been the extra energy brought in to
    "finish up" (RFC 3819).  In this case, I didn't feel like I
    contributed enough to warrant my name being on the front page (I was
    offered a spot).  Sometimes the Right Thing Just Happens.)

  * The above brings up the question of what the name on the front
    actually means.  I recently wrote a 3 page (probably 5 with
    boiler-plate) internet draft.  I had the nugget of a goal.  I called
    a collaborator.  We spent the better part of an hour hashing out a
    scheme and agreeing on it.  I whacked out the text.  He could just
    as easily have done it - I just happened to have a few minutes to do
    it.  I stuffed the text in CVS.  My collaborator polished the text a
    bit.  He certainly didn't write 20% of the text, but the ideas were
    joint and he clearly did work on improving the text.  What is he?
    What am I?  To take this a bit further, before we sent in the
    document we informally circulated it.  Another collaborator of our's
    came up with a couple of very key insights into how to do things
    much better.  We adopted them.  We added his name to the front page.
    He did a very light pass at the text.  Is he front-page worthy?

    If we truly want "egoless" documents then we should list the WG name
    on the front page and all individuals in the "contributors" section.
    I'd say that if there is a situation whereby people's names are
    listed differently then there can never be an "egoless" situation --
    people are always going to want to be in the "more prominent"
    position (even if that prominence is perception-only).

  * [Maybe I have too much ego :-), but ...]

    I guess I don't see "egoless" documents as a terribly useful goal.
    The people who write documents and invest the intellectual capital
    to flesh out the technical details of a specification deserve kudos.
    They deserve to have their names associated with the technology.
    Maybe they deserve a raise, I don't know (and, that is not for me to
    worry about).  People who make useful comments on mailing lists or
    in bars deserve acknowledged.  But, there is a difference between
    helping with the heavy lifting (whether by writing or by doing the
    hard technical work) and having smaller insights that ultimately are
    useful in the document.  There is surely a grey area in the middle
    where someone's contributions are "on the edge".  But, that can be
    handled on a case-by-case basis.  The bottom line, to me, is that I
    don't see any particular shame in saying that the people on the
    front page deserve to be there for their work on the document (and,
    that "work" does not have to equate with "amount they typed into an
    emacs buffer").

This all started because things get blocked up at the last minute by
absentee authors.  (If someone has already suggested this, then I
apologize.  I have been reading somewhat sporadically before the subject
line was changed.)  So, easy... don't wait until the last minute.  When
the document goes to the rfc-ed ask the authors to confirm their contact
information for the AUTH48 period.  That lets you use parallel
processing to figure out what to do with authors who do not respond
while the document is being edited (which would involve the authors, the
chairs, the ADs).  Therefore, there will be a solid plan at the end.
I.e., you'd know who was getting chopped off the list, you'd know that
folks who were non-responsive were likely on vacation, etc.  It's only a
little more work to process positive responses early in the game.
Non-responses have to be dealt with now anyway - this sort of a scheme
just changes when that happens.

My two (4-5?) cents.

allman

---

From: "David B Harrington" <[email-masked]>
Date: Wed, 28 Sep 2005 11:27:15 -0400

> That is *why* we have the Contributors' section.

See http://www.rfc-editor.org/policy.html#policy.auth2 Authors vs.
Contributors

David Harrington
[email-masked]