Few random thoughts I understand the perspective of the person you mention below but it may not be a where the name goes issues. My boss wants to know if I am the person driving the direction of the industry or if I am the person that's managing a process. The first is far more interesting. I note that when I am working with conferences, they are often much more interested in having a chair of WG speak than any participant of the WG. That may be useful information for employers to consider when they are thinking of about having an employee chair something. I certainly hope all the people that substantial helped produce an RFC, including the Chairs, get mentioned in the Acknowledgments in a way that allow the reader to correctly understand the scope and impact of their contribution. Discussing what we do for chairs seems sort of nuts given we do not even list all the authors that contributed substantial text on the front page, if there is a problem to solve one might start with making sure the authors get credit. Most the documents I have done have required far more effort than any WG I have chaired. (Perhaps I just am a really slow at documents, or perhaps I am a really bad chair, or perhaps both but FWIW, that's my experience). All that said, I am really in favor of all the folks that provide useful contributions getting proper credit, but making it look like the credits for star wars is just going to dilute it to the point no one gets any credit for it. On Oct 17, 2013, at 2:47 PM, Barry Leiba <barryleiba@xxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote: > Ted says, with respect to "Quickly replace failing WG Chairs": >> You forgot "from a magical pool of better qualified WG chairs who >> have the time and inclination to take on the work." > > Let me tell you about a conversation I had when I was trying to fill a > chair position: I asked someone I thought could and would do a good > job as chair. She was also a proponent of the technology, and wanted > to be a document author. In response to, "Why not be a chair, and > lead the effort?", part of her answer was something like this: > > "I work for a small company. Whatever work I do on this takes away > from what I do for them, and they want to see something tangible from > it. If I'm (co-)author on a document, my name, and my company's is at > the top of the document. I get credit for the work. My company gets > credit for the work. > > "If I'm a working group chair, I do more work, overall. And, in the > end, I get no credit for it -- my name is not on any of the documents. > And, significantly, my company gets no credit for it whatsoever, not > even listed in the datatracker. > > "When I go to my boss and give him the alternatives, I know which he'll pick." > > Barry