[ga-full] Re: [ga] Meaningful Talk

[Dave Crocker <dcrocker@brandenburg.com>]

Patrick,

No doubt to the relief of many, this will be my last posting on this 
thread.  The previous one should have been, but extra effort seems called 
for, given that the question of successful processes is so basic:

At 11:11 PM 5/28/00 +1000, Patrick Corliss wrote:
>(a)    use plain Anglo-Saxon words as far as possible

Do you, perchance, appreciate how much restriction this places on the use 
of Everyday English -- independent of whether it is Aussie, Yank or British 
English?

In any event if you are having difficulty with any of the vocabulary, let 
me know the specifics and I'll be glad to explain.


>(b)    talk to people as if they are your equal

Always a good place to start.  What should one do when it is not effective?


>(c)    keep sentences short and to the point

It's true that some people have difficulty with sentence construction more 
complicated than used on the evening tellie.  Interestingly some of the 
longest sentences occur in newspapers, albeit with simple vocabulary.

Again if there are sentences you have difficulty understanding, please 
indicate which ones.  I'll be glad to restate them.


>(d)    avoid mixing up too many ideas together

It appears that even dealing with one at a time is to much for some 
participants.  What is to be done then?


>The example below is patronising drivel.

Oddly enough, neither a book publisher nor a magazine editor found it 
neither patronizing nor drivel:

         "Evolving the System", D. Crocker; 1993. In Internet System 
Handbook, D. Lynch. and M. Rose (eds.). Addison-Wesley, Reading,Mass.

         "Making Standards the IETF Way", D. Crocker; in ACM StandardsView, 
Vol. 1, No. 1,1993, reprinted in 
<http://www.brandenburg.com/ietf/ietf-stds.html>.  In particular, note the 
penultimate section, "Comparison with Typical Standardization Efforts".

In fact the comments seem to represent essential and poorly understand 
principals for these kinds of processes, as I noted earlier.

That you think it is patronizing suggests a failure to appreciate how 
frequently it is missed by very bright, serious, accomplished people.  That 
you think it is drivel suggests something even more basic, possibly the 
difficulty raised by your point b.

d/

=-=-=-=-=
Dave Crocker  <dcrocker@brandenburg.com>
Brandenburg Consulting  <www.brandenburg.com>
Tel: +1.408.246.8253,  Fax: +1.408.273.6464
675 Spruce Drive,  Sunnyvale, CA 94086 USA

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