Talk/event proposals "Closed source"

[積丹尼 Dan Jacobson <jidanni@jidanni.org>]

It seems talk/event proposals go into a black box until approved by a "secret"
committee, or discarded.

In fact

https://debconf18.debconf.org/cfp/

doesn't mention that proposals are secret, which is quite different than
one would expect with Debian, and

https://debconf18.debconf.org/talks/new/

only says on the very bottom input box
"Any notes for the conference organisers? These are not visible to the
public."
implying the rest will be public. (Ah, but only after the event gets
approved.)

My worry is, with this "closed source" model, maybe many valuable
talk/event ideas will be missed/skipped/lost/not understood therefore
discarded.

Nor is there any "public oversight" process where we can see if it was
90 out of 100 ideas were rejected, of just 2 out of 12, etc.