Re: Tag membership question

Rick Jelliffe wrote:
> Am I right in thinking that all members of the TAG are now residents of North America?

No.  Chris Lilley is a resident of France and Stuart Williams of 
Britain.  The national makeup of the TAG is interesting: 3 Canadians 
(Bray/Cotton/Orchard), three British (Berners-Lee/Lilley/Williams) and 
three Americans (Connolly/Fielding/Walsh).

> If so, does the TAG feel that this may compromise their ability or credability to architect 
> a "World Wide" Web to some degree? Or, as a lesser question, does the TAG feel they
> are actively encouraging and perpetuating a centre-periphery divide between dominant 
> regions and dominated regions? 

We have observed with regret more than once that the TAG is composed 
entirely of middle-aged white guys who are native speakers of English. 
Since this is supposed to be a technical activity, I'd be worried more 
about the fact that we're all anglophones, except for we have pretty 
good i18n expertise on-board and via callout to people like Duerst and you.

I know for a fact that there are people in various combinations of 
non-male non-white non-native-English-speaker who are plenty well 
qualified to be on the TAG.

Do I think that increasing the diversity would have any impact on the 
outcomes of our technical discussions?  No.  Do I think that it might be 
  potentially of symbolic value?  Maybe.

> Will the TAG consider altering its membership rules to encourage diversity?

The TAG doesn't make its membership rules, so you need to talk to the AB 
and AC.
-- 
Cheers, Tim Bray
         (ongoing fragmented essay: http://www.tbray.org/ongoing/)

Received on Sunday, 9 March 2003 12:20:01 UTC