Re: [Gendispatch] New Version Notification for draft-knodel-nomcom-gender-representation-00.txt

[Eric Rescorla <[e-mail]>]

On Wed, Nov 22, 2023 at 11:57 AM Christian Huitema <[e-mail]>
wrote:

>
> > On Nov 21, 2023, at 8:37 PM, Martin Thomson <[e-mail]> wrote:
> >
> > On Wed, Nov 22, 2023, at 15:25, Brian E Carpenter wrote:
> >> Yes, but if (hypothetically) we had four possible responses: Male,
> >> Female, Other, Prefer-not-to-say,
> >> I really don't know what to do with Prefer-not-to-say.
> >
> > I have no strong preference here, but it could be reasonable to treat
> other and pnts as distinct categories.  Or both together.  Based on my
> understanding of demographics, it is unlikely that either (or both) would
> be selected for more than 8 or 9 out of 10, so while we need to write up
> firm rules, that would be the only reason we'd need that level of
> precision; it's unlikely to be a problem in practice.
>
> Prefer-not-to-say amounts to opting out of gender based selection. That
> means the candidate would be selected based on random ranking only, and
> should never be selected based on "reserved for minority" preferences.
>
> There are many reasons to prefer not to say anything. One is a general
> aversion for keeping personal preferences in databases, based for example
> of the history of repurposing such databases for other purposes, like the
> Gestapo did 60 some years ago. Another is because the participant would
> prefer to keep private details hidden. Yet anther is to introduce enough
> noise in the system to provide cover for those participants who want their
> private details hidden. These are all very good reasons, but they should
> not provide any priority in nomcom selection.
>

Just so I understand what you are proposing in practice. Suppose we have
four
values: A, B, C, and PNTS, then the selection algorithm would be:

exclude = None
while selected_total < 10 {
  candidate = draw_random()
  if selected(gender(x)) == 8 {
     exclude = gender(x)
  }
  if exclude != None {
    if exclude == gender(x)  {
       skip;
    }
    // This avoids giving pnts a preference
    if gender(x) == pnts {
       skip;
    }

   select x;
}

-Ekr






-Ekr