Re: SUMMARY: publish list of nominees?

[Donald Eastlake 3rd <dee3@torque.pothole.com>]

I agree with Robert. The nomcom process is supposed to be a confidential
personnel selection process of people to serve the IETF community. When
a non-profit organization or company selects, say, a Division Director
or Chief Technology Officer or Chief Financial Officer, do they publish
the lists of everyone they are considering and update it continuously
during the process so everyone can chime in with their opinion? Not
in my experience.

Its a continuous slope. If an alphabetic merged list of all suggested
persons for either IAB or IESG were published and updated as names were
added with no names every being dropped, I suppose the damage would be
less. (Although you can't discount the possibility that someone would be
so pissed at being listed they would sue. (It's common for several
people to be suggested to the nomcom for the IAB that do not and have
never had an connection with the IETF. Who knows what such people might
do if publicly listed and not selected?)) But you'd still have the case
of a name added at the last minute and then nominated and confirmed,
which would say to all the others being considered for that position
that the nomcom considered them such a bad possibility that they had to
scrap the bottom of the barrel to find someone acceptable.  (I've been
on four nomcoms and in those there was always at least one and sometimes
2 IESG positions for which the nomcom had to wrack their brains, ask the
members of the community for suggestions, pour over the IAB and the
list, etc., before finding someone they considered good enough to
nominate AND willing to take the job.)

The more information is published, the more it will warp the process
towards a popularity contest, away for a selection of the best person,
and cause embarassment. As a WG chair in both the APPS and SEC areas
this year, I was solicited to rate a number of persons as possible AD in
each area. I understand such requests were was blanket mailed to all WG
chairs for their areas which I believe is the first time this has ever
been done. While I understand that some others obviously have a
different opinion, I consider that such a widespread and broadcast of
who was being considered to be a violation of the nomcom confidentiality
provisions notwithstanding the invocation of nomcom confidentiality in
the message.

There is clearly a balance between getting enough information on persons
being considered and communicating with so many people about who is
being considered to solicit their opinions that the confidentiality
becomes a joke. This year's nomcom was, in my opinion, over the line,
particularly since some persons being considered were WG chairs in the
area for whose AD they were being considered. Thus many being considered
for AD found out who else was being considered, something previous
nomcoms have tried particularly to avoid in most cases.

Donald

On Sat, 30 Mar 2002, Robert Elz wrote:

> Date: Sat, 30 Mar 2002 17:00:58 +0700
> From: Robert Elz <kre@munnari.OZ.AU>
> To: James M Galvin <galvin+ietf-nomcom@eListX.com>
> Cc: ietf-nomcom@lists.elistx.com
> Subject: Re: SUMMARY: publish list of nominees?
>
>     Date:        Fri, 29 Mar 2002 12:56:27 -0500 (EST)
>     From:        James M Galvin <galvin+ietf-nomcom@eListX.com>
>     Message-ID:  <Pine.BSF.4.43.0203291243520.23473-100000@three.elistx.com>
>
>   |     PROPOSED CONSENSUS: We should publish the list of nominees and
>   |     continue to update the list throughout the NOMCOM process.
>
> You can (probably already did) assume I disagree.  This is the worst
> of all the possible interpretations of this - consider you see someone
> on the list of nominees being considered, then you see them vanish,
> clearly they're not the best available choice - then you see them come
> back again, and perhaps get nominated (become a candidate, whatever the
> term is for that).   So, now its clear to everyone that the best nominee
> for the position has not been appointed - but with no idea at all why.
>
> That's an impossible position for anyone to be in.
>
> The only way to avoid that would be to keep people on the list who aren't
> seriously being considered, rather than dropping them - which would cause
> lots of mail objecting to (sometimes even supporting) people who were never
> going to be appointed.
>
> I'd like to see a fully reasoned workable proposal on this before we
> start claimimg to have achieved any kind of consensus, or even proposing
> consensus - just the way we do in other WG's.
>
> That is, we don't first decide the issue, and then try and figure out how
> to make it work, with the issue itself decided, instead we get proposals
> for how to make it work, and then see if any of them result in a desirable
> outcome.
>
> kre
>
> ps: a whole day with no messages on a topic ... clearly everyone has
> said all they're going to say.    What an absurd concept.
>
>
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