[ih] A paper

[John Levine]

It appears that Andrew Sullivan via Internet-history <ajs at crankycanuck.ca> said:
>On Sun, Jul 18, 2021 at 08:37:32AM -0700, Bob Purvy via Internet-history wrote:
>>I would hope after all that, especially Jack and Vint and Andrew's awesome
>>summaries, you will just withdraw the paper.
>
>I think that would be a shame, because I think the paper is making a
>point that some on this list seem to be missing, but that is extremely
>important for anything pretending to be an Internet _history_ list,
>rather than just Internet recollections.

I agree that there is a useful paper lurking within this document, but in its current
form it's counterproductive.  It's full of misunderstandings, wrong guesses, and plain
errors of fact which discredit whatever it's trying to say.

There is a dismaying history of non-technical authors trying to write
about Internet history, making serious errors, and trying to brazen it
out. Dave's note a few messages back was about his review of Milt
Mueller's book "Ruling the Root." Dave, who was of course there at the
time, found that Milt faked a lot of the references. The review and
Milt's unpersuasive responses are fun to read for some version of fun.
Another paper full of errors just confirms the belief that the
Internet history crowd have nothing to say.

If the authors found some mentors and reviewers who know the subject
area, perhaps from this list, and went through and checked the
assumptions and conclusions and footnotes, and got the facts right and
the conclusions better supported, I think they could turn it into an
OK paper with a persuasive point, with which I happen to agree.

R's,
John

PS: I note that the lead author is a law student. I have read a lot of
law review articles, and I have tried to read this paper, and a
writing coach could greatly broaden their audience.