On 08/08/2013 08:48 PM, Phillip Hallam-Baker wrote:
Barcodes have the potential to work really well and require almost no
change from current practice.
Except that current practice is broken anyway and we desperately need to
change it, not add more mechanisms to reinforce continued use of it.
Actually I think all of this emphasis on being able to reliably identify
every speaker is a bit beside the point. With rare exceptions, who is
speaking is not nearly as relevant as what is being said. Of course
there are times when it's important or useful to know who is speaking -
say if it's an AD, or the document author/editor, or a person with whom
there needs to be a followup discussion. But when we find ourselves
working so hard to make sure that we can reliably identify every speaker
(and perhaps also to exclude anonymous / pseudonymous input), maybe
that's a distraction. Maybe we should instead be concentrating on how
to make sure that our standards have been written in light of a wide
degree of input about requirements, are technically sound, and have
enjoyed thorough review.
Would being able to reliably know exactly who said everything that was
said in a WG meeting visibly improve the quality of our standards? If
the answer is not a clear "yes" (and I don't think it is) then I suggest
that this topic is a distraction.
Keith