Re: CONSENSUS: should there be term limits?

[Theodore Tso <tytso@mit.edu>]

On Sun, Mar 17, 2002 at 05:00:43PM -0500, James M Galvin wrote:
> I believe the consensus for the question of whether or not there should
> be term limits is:
> 
>     there should not be term limits.
> 

If this ends up being the consensus, I would request that revised
document not be silent on this point, but there be an explicit note
that it is the sense of the community that there should not be term
limits, and that the primary criteria to be used by the nomcom is
whether or not the incumbent is continueing to do a good job.  If an
incumbent has become ossified, and is doing a bad job --- then sure,
remove him.  

The reason why I think this should be stated, and not left unsaid, is
that if it truely is a sense of the community that there should be no
term limits, then explicitly stating it will help prevent nomcom
members who have their own private beliefs from reopening this
discussion every year in a closed forum.   

A related problem is that the nomcom members do not necessarily
represent the community, because while they are randomly selected, it
is a random selection from a self-selected pool.  (I believe that how
we pick nomcom members should be changed, but I'll save that proposal
for a different thread.)

Hence, I believe it would be useful for RFC 2727 to have some guidance
to nomcom members from the community about what criteria should be
used.  Of course, nomcom members are always free to vote their own
conscience, but having guidance is useful, and avoids a problem where
currently, sitting IAB/IESG members have no idea what criteria will be
used to judge them --- RFC 2727 is entirely silent on this point, and
how they will be judged is completely dependent on the private views
of ten randomly selected people out of a self-selected subsample of
the community.

Personally, I would actually go further, and say that I believe there
should be a presumption in favor of an incumbent, since it takes time
to learn how to become an effective AD.  In particular, I believe that
nomcoms should be advised that removing a sitting IETF chair in
particular should not be done lightly.  Finding someone who fill that
job well is extraordinarily difficult.  People like Fred or Herald
don't come along frequently, and filling their shoes would be
difficult indeed.

						- Ted