REOPENED DISCUSSION Re: Final Call: accept incorporated comments

[todd glassey <todd.glassey@worldnet.att.net>]

----- Original Message -----
From: "Dave Crocker" <dcrocker@brandenburg.com>
To: "Brian E Carpenter" <brian@hursley.ibm.com>
Cc: <ietf-nomcom@lists.elistx.com>; <poised@lists.tislabs.com>
Sent: Thursday, March 14, 2002 4:15 PM
Subject: Re: Final Call: accept incorporated comments


> At 10:26 PM 3/14/2002 +0100, Brian E Carpenter wrote:
> >tI am very strongly against term limits (speaking as somebody who will
step
> >down voluntarily next Wednesday evening). In fact we do *not* have an
infinite
> >pool of talented and available people, and constraining the NomCom's
choices
> >by arbitrary term limits would be a major blunder.
> >
> >We do need turnover, but not on an arbitrary timescale.

Why not? If there are not bodies to fill the seat then leave it empty. If
they all (the seats) become empty, then shut down the organization for lack
of interest. This is not rocket science.

>
>
> Nomcom can and does decline to renew incumbents as it deems
> appropriate.  Hence we are back to asking what real problem term limits
solve?

Terms limits put in place a method of saying that no one can make a carrer
of sitting there at these seats. No one should either and a number seem to
as of today. That's all, and term limits may not be right.

But if there are no term limits there needs to be a simple method of
recalling someone for cause in this process at all levels and that does not
exist now. What there is today is a convulted set of RFC's from POISSON that
talk about roles and processes and methods in somewhat ambiguous language,
but more over that form a difficult set of organizational bylaws to follow
and an extremely complex system to use.

Is that the price of being involved in a technical standards organization,
that it takes a large amount of energy to be expended?

Look with todays methods, it is a real pain in the posterior to have to
remember that the RFC Rules are in RFC2026 for right now but that it
invalidated RFC1602, and that it is likely that it also will be changing.
Further that the WG Chairs are sort of described in RFC2418 and a couple of
other places, and that there is a new time sensitive document on removing
IESG and WG Chair Members.  The real quesiton is "Why dont we have just a
simple set of process documents that are separate from the rest of the
processes we work on?" and the answer is...

This Architecture of constantly chained together and changing content
documents to a large amount prevents anyone from outside the organization
figuring out what and how the organization works for some time.


>
> We need to make changes to fix real and serious problem.  We need to
> rigorously avoid fixing problems that are strictly theorectical.

There is nothing theoretical about any of my complaints -

>
> That said, I'll note that the current nomcom did discuss how "pleasant"
> term limits would be, since it would save nomcom from having to risk
> upsetting an incumbent.

OK then, what needs to happen then to NonCom and the other appoinment syle
positions in the organizations?

>
> d/
>
> ----------
> Dave Crocker <mailto:dave@tribalwise.com>
> TribalWise, Inc. <http://www.tribalwise.com>
> tel +1.408.246.8253; fax +1.408.850.1850
>