SUO: Re: SUOP Topic :> Definition Of Issue
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SUOPT :> ISS. Note 4
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JA = Jon Awbrey
MW = Matthew West
Re: SUOP Page 14. http://suo.ieee.org/email/msg11623.html
Copied with emendations here:
MW: Dear Adam, Robert, and OpenCyc (sorry not sure who is PL for this)
MW: There seems to be a groundswell to let anyone raise issues.
For myself as a Project Leader I have no problem with this.
After all if it really does turn out to be a problem, we
can always change the rules.
MW: So I am inclined to relax this.
If you have a problem with that,
now would be the time to make
a case.
JA: A suggestion on behalf of less ambiguous communication.
I picked up mediately on the fact that you employed the
term "issue" as a formalist term_of_art to mean a topic
in question that members are formally obliged to attend
to at risk of forfeiting their right to have their mind
be accorded otherwise due attention with respect to it,
but I fear that many people are not accustomed to this
form of 2-speak (= doublespeak), indeed, I have already
noted the object example where you used this 2-speak to
finesse and by this finesse to say you ignored the point
of John Sowa's observation that clearly anybody ought to
be allowed to ask a question -- I believe this directive
has already been written on every wall of Philosophy City,
if indeed that existentialist graffito tends to fade from
time to time if not periodically applied with fresh paint --
as if somehow there were a genuine hair to be split between
asking a question and raising an issue. So again I suggest,
albeit with great reluctance, toward less picaresque speech,
it may serve to capitalize or to place in quotes or brackets
such term_of_art usages thus: Issue, "Issue", "<Issue>", etc.
MW: Yes, in discussions about the Procedures Document when
I use the word "Issue" I mean "A formal issue raised in
accordance with the provision of the Procedures Document".
The position of Project Leader being nigh akin to the King's Man,
you must recuse yourself from taking the throne of Humpty Dumpty.
For of all the unsatisfactory propositions I ever met in thought,
to think that no well-founded ears with their feet on the ground
will be around when Humpty Dumpty's fall is heard loud enough in
forest and wabe to wake the trees therein and therenigh, that is
the most unsatisfactory thought of all.
Well, I'm just stalling here, as there is a very tricky thicket
just at this point that I always seem to lack the energy or the
vorpal blade to snicker-snack through when I come to it, and so
I'll have to leave it to a more frabjous day. Callooh! Callay!,
Anyway ...
JA: P.S. Matthew, I hope that you, personally, will forgive me
the bluntness with which I will be forced to speak during
the course of these Procedure-setting deliberations, for
I fear that the Issues are far too important to avoid
the Obligations of Plain Speech. Thanks again, Jon.
MW: I have never had a problem with plain speaking.
If anything I prefer it.
And so say we all. But I see an old saw that applies here:
One person's plain speech is another person's purple prose.
Jon Awbrey
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