On Thu, May 19, 2016 at 6:28 PM, Adam Lawson <alawson@aqorn.com> wrote:
Call me a cynic and this may be an unfair statement but those people who present at every summit will continue to be chosen, only now at random. Just my unsubstantiated feelings on that subject.
I've stopped raging against the machine long ago. ;)
So I'm seeing a disconnect here: we have some folks arguing any talk selection process that is self-policing implies a lack of trust in good faith and thus does more harm than good (Doug, Dave). We have others indicating that from personal experience, good faith and impartiality on everyone's part is already something we shouldn't assume (Tristan, Adam). I realize I'm not quoting you directly, but forgive me for paraphrasing/condensing/sharpening. So to summarize, it looks like there are four options currently being discussed: (1) Keep everything exactly as it has been (this implies rejecting Claire's original proposal to drop voting). (2) Drop voting, put everything in the track chairs' hands. (3) Use some form of random talk selection, in combination with submission pre-filtering and public comments. (4) Use an approach where speakers vote on a random subset of talks and rank them, also with public comments. Out of those, (4) uses a self-policing review scheme, and (3) promises to curb abuse and favoritism by effectively leaving things mostly to chance. (3) and (4) can ultimately do without track chairs. Just to get a reference gauge, would those following this discussion respond with a ranking in order of preference? Mine (from most preferred to least preferred) is 4, 3, 1, 2. Cheers, Florian