[sigcomm] attendance policies for SIGCOMM-affiliated events

[Joe Touch]

Vern Paxson wrote:
>> ...
>> This allows the chair to skew the content of the discussion. E.g., if we
>> want to have an ATM-fest, we might invite only ATM-friendly folk. Or for
>> ATM-bashing, only ATM haters.
> 
> I must say, I was about this close to laughing out loud when I read this.
> I have a hard time seeing this view as anything other than, well, paranoid.
> Yes, what you describe is *possible* if the chair can invite attendees,
> but it's by no means likely from my experience; and it's a presumption of
> bad faith that I find disheartening.

It's an exaggeration to show the point. Proponents of invitation
meetings already noted inviting people who they felt would be active
participants (would they have a bias towards active 'pro' participants,
vs. active 'con' ones?), or limiting per-institution or per-group (which
presumes that all in a group or institution think the same way or have
the same to offer a meeting).

The key question is _why_ random isn't good enough, and why limit
attendance at all?

>> While I appreciate that we all would like to 'trust the chairs', we do
>> NOT trust the chairs to _invite_ all the papers (or the PC, for that
>> matter)
> 
> Regarding your parenthetical, in fact we do.  Case in point, this year's
> SIGCOMM PC was selected by the chairs without input from the TAC.  We
> requested that they solicit input; they declined; we still sponsored the
> event.

The parenthetical was intended to be parsed the other way - neither the
chair nor the PC invite the papers.

Joe

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