If you go back to my original message on this topic, the issue was
that in many organizations, for better or worse, they measure your
productivity by the amount of author credit you get, which is why we
see scientific papers with 50 or more co-authors.
We're not publishing academic papers here, we're creating Internet Standards.
If a spec doesn't have enough market demand to have someone pony up WG chair
resources to help it through the process, maybe that should tell us something.
Playing devil's advocate, you understand.
The problem is that as things currently stand, we're dependent on large
institutions to pay their employees to be ADs. Even were someone to want
me to be an AD (I'm not holding my breath), I'm self employed, I couldn't
afford it unless some third party paid my bills.
That means that we're at the mercy of managers and tenure committes and
such who don't necessarily know much about the IETF. Whatever we can do
to help them understand that a) it's a lot of work and 2) it's worth it
seems worthwhile to me.
Regards,
John Levine, johnl(_at_)taugh(_dot_)com, Taughannock Networks, Trumansburg NY
"I dropped the toothpaste", said Tom, crestfallenly.