English (was Re: A few hums)

[Keith Moore]

> I guess it is ok to remind people to turn off mobile phones and
> pagers, but not to provide them with guidance about a speaking style
> that might be helpful to non-native English listeners.

To me it seems perfectly appropriate and consistent with the goals of
this WG to include in our list of problems a mention that non-native
English speakers/listeners have difficulties participating in IETF. 
Since we are not working on solutions in this WG, we don't need to agree
on the mechanism by which the problem is solved, or even whether the
problem can be solved.  For now, it is enough to recognize it as a
problem.

We are constructing this list of problems because we wish to understand
the breadth of difficulties we face.  By making ourselves aware of this
breadth we hope to avoid crafting "solutions" which address some
problems while making other problems worse.  But we also need to keep in
mind that many problems are inherently difficult to solve - and those
related to differences in human language are far from the only
difficult problems we face. 

So we should not expect that we can completely solve every problem on
our list.  Therefore, placing a problem on our list should not create an
expectation that we will completely solve it.   Neither should we avoid
listing problems merely because we do not believe we can completely
solve them.

We will always have difficult problems.  We will solve the ones we can,
especially those that most impede our work.  Hopefully we will still be
able to accomplish useful work in spite of those that remain.