--On Thursday, May 11, 2017 00:28 +0300 Yoav Nir
<ynir.ietf@xxxxxxxxx> wrote:
>> On 10 May 2017, at 15:50, John C Klensin <john-ietf@xxxxxxx>
>> wrote:
>>
>> I favor at least a nominal registration fee for the same
>> reason -- not because I see it as an important revenue source
>> (a rather different discussion0 but because it helps
>> eliminate Donald Duck registrations.
>
> How does a fee eliminate Donald Duck registrations? There's
> nothing preventing me from registering *now* for the Prague
> physical meeting as Donald Duck as long as my $700 are good.
Unless things have changed since I was paying active attention,
most registrations, especially those in advance of a meeting,
are paid with credit cards. If you can get a credit card in
the name of M. Duck, more power to you, but I suggest the effort
required to do that would at least mostly separate those who
have read reasons to want to participate under aliases from
those who were merely being difficult on principle or who were
suffering from an excess of self-indulgent cuteness.
A different way to say the same thing is that, especially with
remote participants, a requirement for strong authentication of
all participants is probably impossible or nearly so. That
doesn't mean we should avoid making a reasonable best effort and
I believe that requiring some registration payment, even a small
one, is both a useful part of such an effort and a way of
encouraging a modicum of additional seriousness.
YMMD.
john