[gnso-rds-pdp-wg] authoritative

[Andrew Sullivan]

On Tue, May 02, 2017 at 11:41:11AM +0000, Greg Aaron wrote:
> Regarding "authoritative": the solution is not to avoid a word because someone might possibly have another idea of what it means.  A solution is for the WG to settle on definitions and then use the words consistently.  That's what engineers and policy-makers do all the time in RFCs, and papers like SAC051 (which gave us some foundational terms), and WG reports.   
> 

Prescriptivist sentiment about word-meaning is common among
legislators and language police, but it never works among actual
English speakers.  It is quite clear that this term is going to cause
confusion, regardless of what we write down, and if even those of us
participating in this discussion can't come to reasonably quick
agreement about the topic I fail to see how clinging to the word is
helpful.

A

-- 
Andrew Sullivan
ajs at anvilwalrusden.com