Re: political farce

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Message-id: <199312201942.AA26315@quark.isi.edu>
To: "Matthew L. Ginsberg" <ginsberg@cs.uoregon.edu>
Cc: fikes@cs.stanford.edu, interlingua@ISI.EDU, neches@ISI.EDU
Reply-To: neches@ISI.EDU
Subject: Re: political farce 
In-reply-to: Your message of Sun, 19 Dec 1993 18:17:13 -0800.
             <9312200217.AA02423@t.uoregon.edu> 
Date: Mon, 20 Dec 93 11:45:55 PST
From: Robert Neches <neches@ISI.EDU>

To all participants:

The amount of traffic on various issues over this mailing
list is indicative to me of a very open discussion process.

Ultimately, how much anyone makes of the products of the
Interlingua working group will be based on:

(1) the community's assessment of the technical strength
    of the document

(2) the demonstrated utility of facilities that are 
    developed based on the specification

W.r.t. the first point: since this is an open discussion forum,
widespread academic review can, has, and will take place through the
participation of anyone with an interest -- in addition to review
committees such as Richard is now organizing.  The discussion in
this forum provides a great deal of information about the community
assessment of any given draft of the document.  It also shapes the
community's assessment, so I regard it as unlikely that a flawed
document will pass inspection.

W.r.t. the second point: as I've urged in previous messages, it is
worth keeping in mind that technical perfection is moot unless the
product is useful in practice.  Conversely, a scheme that left some
problems unsolved but nevertheless facilitated practical work would
still be of great value to a number of us.  Thus, I again urge that
we keep in mind the importance of utility as a major evaluation
criterion.

Finally, I would like to encourage all participants to keep their
remarks on a professional level.  These are topics upon which
reasonable people can differ.

Best wishes to all for the coming New Year.

  -- Bob

======================================================================
                            Robert Neches
     USC/ISI, 4676 Admiralty Way, Marina del Rey, CA 90292 USA
                Phone: 310/822-1511, Fax: 310/823-6714
======================================================================