BUT. I wanted to say at least this part publicly, anyhow. It bothers me a ton when I work on C and C-adjacent things. It's more a vent than anything (I honestly expect ~nothing to change when I say it), but still:
… the community never grasps proposals or anything related to it, or reads the paper trail, so suddenly they're shocked or surprised when things go into C or change C. And then they advocate at the literal last minute (or post-last-minute). Even now, most of the feedback I get comes in later and later, and often it's sent as private e-mails that I can't publish or point to in order to say "hey, look, here's this thing we've done that has had genuinely good impact". Sometimes, the folks in these groups never communicate at all; if I don't literally dive into their Discord/Slack/mailing list/personally reach out, it never gets to me. Or anyone, for that matter; it's just a bottle of sentiments that never go anywhere. I cannot begin to explain to you the number of times I've heard feedback from e.g. [REDACTED] Employees or people in the [REDACTED] Division or some old, ancient Really Smart Assembly Guy at [REDACTED] happy with the work some of us are doing, but as like a small e-mail or a passing thought in a DM. And believe me, I appreciate that e-mail/DM/message a whole hell of a lot and it gives me motivation to keep fighting! But it also puts a lot of pressure on me to keep being the "Emissary" on behalf of this sea of people that are reasonably powerful and could change the flow of the tide with a single public post.... anywhere. But they don't. So I have to keep shouldering a ton of this work on my back, and every time it just looks like I'm some stupid upstart ruining C and not carrying the wishes of so many people on my back; and it's STUPIDLY frustrating.
I don't know how else to explain to people that you get the outcomes you shill for. If you have sincere thoughts on how things are going, SPEAK UP. Especially if you're literally The Super Smart Guy.
I've read the old meeting minutes and some of the old papers, I get the older iterations of the C Committee either ignored you or didn't do anything with your feedback. That's not me. I really need you to start saying shit, ON THE RECORD.
