I am not really keen on putting these labels on folks, so my preference would be to not bake this into the process.
I am also not sure what problem we are solving though.
That's a good point. The immediate problem is that I worry that some accepted proposals have important ramifications for Haddock, and we have done a poor job at considering these ramifications. We could solve that problem directly, by (for example) adding a new required section to proposals. But I see this problem as a symptom of the lack of diverse representation on the steering committee. (Here, I am talking about diversity in terms of interests/areas of active engagement, not in terms of identity/background. Diversity in terms of identity/background is another important problem, and arguably more pernicious, but not one I am addressing in this thread.) Recalling that we started this steering committee with a goal of diverse representation, I thought we should perhaps return to that, in the hopes that the committee can better represent the community.
I admit that, beyond Haddock, I do not have a concrete example of actions we have taken in which we're not representing the community. So you might say that I have a solution in search of a problem, but I do think addressing this would be good for our committee (and for the language).
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To summarize where we are in this thread:
I asked:
How should we ensure that various constituencies are well served by our process?
A. By having shepherds reach out to community members external to the committee who can share their expert opinion
B. By maintaining a list of constituencies that the committee membership covers (ideally)
I said B
Vitaly said A+B