On 08/05/2013 12:31 PM, Hadriel Kaplan wrote: > but at least one anonymous jabber participant (named "Guest") did > remotely speak multiple times at the mic on one of the RAI working > group sessions this past week (at RTCWEB if I recall). I was > personally ok with it, but it was awkward. Ah. I wasn't aware of that. Not stylish at all IMO on the part of whoever was "Guest". I'd be confident that the chairs and participants will deal with it ok though. We do manage to deal with silliness (e.g. people with bad ideas) all the time, so I don't see why this'd pose an insurmountable problem to a wg. On 08/05/2013 06:38 PM, John C Klensin wrote: > The reasons to discourage anonymity aren't just "patent > nonsense" (although that should be sufficient and I rather like > the pun). Thanks. The pun was accidental as it happens, but I did leave it in after I spotted it :-) Puns aside, its an important point. Most patents are nonsense (in terms of being really inventive) and we shouldn't base our processes anywhere near primarily on the existence of that nonsense. > Despite all we say and believe about individual > participation, the IETF has a legitimate need to understand the > difference between comments on a specification from an audience > with diverse perspectives and organized campaigns or a loud > minority with a shared perspective. Good point. We have similar issues with folks who do lots of contract work I guess. But, IMO we should first make sure we can hear the good points that are to be made, and only then modulate our reactions to those in terms of who-pays-whom or whatever. Put another way, regardless of patents or who's paying, if someone (even anonymously) comes up with a really good technical point, then we do have to pay attention. But I think we do do that. In contrast, I think the real challenge remote participants face is being heard. And when/if we solve that problem, I suspect that remote participants with bad ideas will be a far worse problem than those who'd like to submarine a patent or further a subtle corporate agenda. So again that leads me back to trying to encourage folks to just make the tools better for us all and to only then try figure out how we need to manage that. Perhaps Hadriel's anecdote above means that how we use jabber is, after about a decade, now mature enough that we ought think more about how we formalise its use. I'm ok with waiting another longish time before even thinking about how to do the same with successful inbound audio for example. S.