Mentoring [Re: "Adult supervision"]

[Edward Lewis]

At 8:19 -0500 5/7/03, Spencer Dawkins wrote:
>Brian/Edward,
>
>Might a problem statement for this be:
>
>- We don't have a good way to help new participants learn "things everyone
>knows". The "Tao of the IETF" is focused on work style, not technical
>principles. When we try to reveal guiding technical principles as part of
>post-WG document review, the input is a "late surprise", and the process
>does not scale.
>
>?

Yes.

What's the purpose of having an all-volunteer, enforcement-less body 
but to disseminate knowledge in a non-confrontational manner?

Ten years ago the dissemination of knowledge consisted of reporting 
experimental results as we were collectively learning at the same 
pace.  Nowadays there is a large body of protocol development history 
piling up and the lessons in there need to be passed on.  Today's 
less experienced engineers are confronted by a pre-built world, are 
educated in ways more varied than we were, and the educators that 
they have been taught by are themselves further removed from the 
those having hands-on experience.  So, now it is up to the IETF to 
fill in the gaps that we didn't see 10 years ago.

I don't mean to demean any demographic, but as a population grows, 
expertise in any one specific area drops - offset by an increase of 
specific areas, that is.

There are a couple of other observations to make.

When it comes to "adult supervision," you have to remember that if an 
adult talks to a child as if the child were an adult, the adult may 
get frustrated.  If the adult doesn't adjust, the problem is the 
adult.  (Frustration is an internal problem.)

Back in the day, some protocols were borne of pure principles.  Over 
time, the principles were undercut, meaning that today's version of 
the protocol is not the pristine example of engineering that the 
pioneers intended.  New comers are studying something that has become 
a "bad example."  My experience is in DNS - if it weren't for some 
side discussions with pioneers, I would have never understood what 
DNS is supposed to be.  Now I can see where we once went wrong with 
it.  Why is this important?  Without that knowledge, extensions 
become impossible to build right.

It might be that mentoring activities seem to not scale.  But the 
alternative is worse - and it seems that ignorance does scale quite 
well.

Teaching is not debating.
-- 
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Edward Lewis                                            +1-703-227-9854
ARIN Research Engineer

Note to pilots: a three-point landing SHOULD NOT include a wing.