Re: DISCUSSION: publish list of nominees?

[Thomas Narten <narten@us.ibm.com>]

This is an important discussion to have, but we should be clear about
what we are talking about, as I think some of the details are *very*
important.

Terminology (from rfc 2727)

nominee - a person whose name has been sent to the nomcom as someone
to consider for a particular open position. Note that a nominated
person doesn't necessarily know they've been nominated, nor would they
necessarily even agree to serve if selected.

Candidate: Person selected by the nomcom to serve, but not yet
confirmed by the confirming body.

Confirmed candidate: person confirmed by the confirming body, i.e.,
one that is formally appointed.

Note that there are yet more distinctions internal to the nomcom (I'm
making up some of this terminology):

confirmed nominee: a nominee that has agreed to serve (i.e., doesn't
say "no" when asked, fills out the questionaire, etc.) But the nomcom
has done no real filtering yet on this list.

"short list": persons still in the running. Typically, the nomcom
makes several passes over the short list, removing names until it has
a list that is manageable in terms of looking at each of the persons
on the list very carefully (e.g., maybe interviewing them). The short
list can change over time, getting shorter, than maybe longer again,
then maybe shorter, etc., all depending on how the deliberations go.

IMO, publishing the list of nominees is a lot less useful than some
people seem to think. For some positions (e.g., IAB, or IESG where the
incumbant is stepping down) one might get 20-30 nominees.  Asking the
community for feedback on such a long list is pretty useless,
especially when the names on the list that folks are most comfortable
with are in fact not even willing to do the job.  Indeed, for the IESG
case, moving from "candidate" to "confirmed candidate" might winnow
the number down by 2/3rds. Lots of people say no.

The list of "confirmed candidates" gets more interesting. It's
somewhat shorter, but it too may be so long as to not be useful.

What would probably be the most useful to the nomcom is if some
version of the short list is made public. This would give the
community a much better idea of who the nomcom was seriously
considering, which is the point at which frank and broad input is most
useful. Publishing a longer list without knowing which of those on the
list have effectively already been removed from consideration by the
the nomcom makes it too easy for folks to focus on the wrong people or
assume that things are reasonably on track.

But... the short list can change. Would every version need to be
published? (seems problematic and would give too much visibility into
the internal processes). Also, if the nomcom decides it doesn't like
*any* of its choices, and then goes out and recruits someone else,
would the short list need to be published again? If it didn't wouldn't
the community be rather surprised to see someone selected that was
never on the published list? But, when it gets to crunch time, the
nomcom may not be able to wait (say) 48 hours between publishing a
list and making a selection.  All kinds of potential problems here...

Finally, one thing not to forget is that for some positions (IESG
especially), some serious arm twisting is needed to get folks to agree
to serve. It has happened on previous nomcoms that nominees have
effectively said "I'd be interested in serving, but I think the
current incumbent is doing a fine job (and is a friend/colleage/etc/),
thus I am NOT willing to be a nominee unless the incumbant is stepping
down voluntarily. This makes publishing a "confirmed nominee" list
rather problematical if the nomcom is in fact seriously considering
replacing an incumbent.

Thomas