On Apr 15, 2013, at 4:44 AM, t.p. <daedu...@btconnect.com> wrote: > So perhaps, to reduce the bias, e.g. towards "western white", any system > of choosing should give preference to the views of those who do not > attend IETF meetings, for whom judgement is based solely on the > contributions the person in question is seen to make - via the mailing > lists - towards open standards and running code.
We could also all be assigned masks, vocoders and randomly-generated numbers at the beginning of each IETF, and go around wearing burlap robes. The problem with your solution is that at the moment it's actually pretty hard to participate in IETF without going to meetings. It's a source of some frustration to me that despite having basically invented the Internet, the IETF still does business as if we were living in the pre-Internet era. Three face-to-face meetings a year is a lot of carbon, and I think it also creates barriers for participation that are only readily surpassed by people who for whatever reason happen to have a great deal of advantage. The degree of good fortune that allows me to participate in IETF as I do is breathtaking in its improbability.
