Re: SUMMARY: publish list of nominees?

[James M Galvin <galvin+ietf-nomcom@eListX.com>]

On Sat, 30 Mar 2002, Geoff Huston wrote:

    Firstly, you omitted an argument that publishing such a list would
    increase the likelihood of organized public campaigning for
    positions.

Right, sorry about that.  It was in my notes so it's really just an
oversight.

    you also omitted the argument that such actions would do nothing to
    increase the level of confidence in the Nomcom performing its duties
    diligently.

This was intentional on my part.  This criteria applies to everything so
I chose not to call it out special with respect to this issue.

    Secondly, I fail to see how 4 in favour and 2 against can be summarized as
    a "consensus". It is not consensus, it is the view of 4 posters, while 2
    posters dissented. That's not consensus.

There are two ways to look at this.  On the one hand, if 6 people
participate in a discussion and 4 support one view and 2 support
another, then consensus is the view of the 4.

On the other hand, I suspect your real concern is the lack of
participation, i.e., that 6 people do not comprise a sufficient quorum
from which to infer a point of view.  All working groups have this
problem, some more than others and some less.  I don't know how to fix
this.  All I can do is work with what's available.  Any suggestions you
have would be welcome.

    Thirdly, I echo concerns by others that the preemptory posting of
    such ex-cathedra pronouncements of "proposed consensus" within a few
    days of a topic being opened is not normally interpreted as
    responsible chairing of a working group.

As noted earlier today in the AGENDA message, I am not the Chair of this
group, Avri Doria is.  Also in that message the process for progressing
issues was described.  The first step in that process is to post a
summary from time to time with a proposed consensus.  It is important to
emphasize that the consensus is *proposed* and that summaries are posted
when appropriate.

In this particular case there had been no messages in almost a day on
this issue.  Further, with a holiday weekend approaching I considered it
*responsible* to summarize where we were, especially since I was doing
it for a number of the issues before us.  All summaries explicitly
invite further comment, which I would equate with *proposed*.

I welcome any suggestions you have for improving the process.

Jim