Re: Affiliation disclosure in security WGs

Hi Rob,
At 03:03 AM 02-07-2026, Rob Wilton (rwilton) wrote:
>One other aspect that I think comes into play here is the 
>distinction between an actual conflict of interest (CoI) and a 
>perceived conflict of interest.

The initial comment was about working groups from a particular 
Area.  I'll look at it from a working group angle.  I would pay 
attention to whether there are any signs of potential dominance in the group:

   (a) Part of the group always take the same position.

   (b) Part of the group share a common affiliation (word uses loosely).

   (c) Part of the group would like to discourage a newcomer from
       providing input.

I took into consideration the following point (RFC 2418, Page 5) for 
Item (c): "Consumer interest can be measured by participation of 
end-users within the IETF process, ..."

As a comment about affiliation, nowadays, it is possible to ask 
https://chat.mistral.ai/chat the following question: "Can you find 
the affiliations of everyone who posted to the emailcore mailing list 
over the past months?"  I don't really need to ask a LLM to do that 
as the participants in, for example, email-related groups have been 
participating in such discussions for the past 10 years or more.

Regards,
S. Moonesamy