trust networks and class

[Harald Tveit Alvestrand]

--On 21. juni 2003 10:06 +0900 avri <avri at apocalypse.org> wrote:

> while reading the list on this topic, i have been having
> trouble with the word 'trust'.  just as others have issues
> with the word 'class'.
>
> when i hear that a certain set of tasks were given to those
> the AD trusts, i immediately hear that those not chosen
> were not trusted.

I didn't think of it this way.....

in many (most) cases, there is either one obvious candidate (the original 
proposer, the person who drafted the first version) or many qualified 
people, one of which gets picked.

In the process of picking chairs for this WG, for instance, I had about 17 
candidates suggested to me; all of them were people I trusted to try to do 
the right thing for the IETF - in one or two cases, I doubted their 
competence to perform the job, and in some cases, I felt that I had too 
little information to evaluate their probable performance. In the end, it 
came down to choosing the ones I thought best qualified for the job, based 
on the information available to me, among a set of good  people willing to 
serve.
(it's a nice example since the process is already public.... there's no 
other reason to pick that process in particular....)

> while it may be an awkward term in this setting, i believe
> we are talking about an affinity group, where the members
> of the group are grouped based on shared experience,
> similar identity and common challenges.  as with classes
> and trust networks, affinity groups are sometimes relatively
> closed and take energy, sometimes a lot, to enter.

Yes! It also gets around the problem of having multiple kinds of 
affinities, of which "trust" is only one aspect. I like that term!