On Fri, Jul 22, 2011 at 05:16:44PM +0200, Alexander Reichle-Schmehl wrote:
> > I think this is an invented problem. There is no reason not to take Debian
> > contributors at their word when they say they "need" a certain amount of
> > travel assistance to attend DebConf. If we aren't willing to trust Debian
> > contributors to answer such a question honestly, we're doing it wrong.
>
> I'm sorry to say it, but no. This year for example someone from a
> country with good traffic infrastructure said his travel would cost
> three times the amount as other contributors from the very same
> country under very similar circumstances. Sad but true, the requested
> amount doesn't always seems reasonable.
That is indeed sad, but not an argument for asking applcants both
numbers. In fact, in the use case you describe, you have used the second
number ("cost of your trip") in a comparative way, to exclude people who
has entered insane costs *wrt others*. That is one way of achieving the
goal of voting down people asking "too much".
Another way to obtain the same goal is to have a table of expected
travel costs from various places around the world. This is, in fact,
what various universities I've been worked for where doing to accept, or
not, sponsorship requests. If you have ballpark numbers, you can avoid
asking participants for their own travel cost, you'll simply compare
what they need with those numbers.
I do understand this solution discriminate against those who are unlucky
and find "bad ticket prices", but that is actually a feature if you ask
me: it will encourage people to look for cheap travel alternatives,
which is also a way of using in the most efficient way the donations we
receive.
The obvious drawback of this solution is that someone needs to populate
the ballpark numbers table. It can be done lazily (i.e. while voting
applications the herb team members populate the table using travel price
search engines), but it is still extra work.
Cheers.
--
Stefano Zacchiroli -o- PhD in Computer Science \ PostDoc @ Univ. Paris 7
zack@{upsilon.cc,pps.jussieu.fr,debian.org} -<>- http://upsilon.cc/zack/
Quando anche i santi ti voltano le spalle, | . |. I've fans everywhere
ti resta John Fante -- V. Capossela .......| ..: |.......... -- C. Adams
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