Re: What is the problem [was Re: SUMMARY: publish list of nominees?]

["Joel M. Halpern" <joel@stevecrocker.com>]

The concern that the nomcom did not solicit sufficient input is not unique 
to this years committee.  While Marshall may have been personally able to 
put together a list of mixed nominees and non-starter nominees that people 
would believe and have trouble sorting out, that is actually a difficult 
thing to do well.  It is complicated further by the fact that getting good 
input about the nominees the committee is interested is hard enough without 
adding significant amounts of basically irrelevant effort to the members 
work load.

A number of people have expressed concern about the effect on individuals 
of the disclosure of the nominees.  Assuming that the list we are 
discussing is the confirmed nominees, ie people who are actually willing to 
serve if selected, then it seems to me that any person seriously on that 
list for either the IESG or IAB must be able to cope with the level of 
embarrassment and inter-personal tension that may be associated with being 
listed.  While it is not a good property of our community, it is the case 
that IESG and IAB members are always under significant pressure.  If an 
individual can not cope with being publicly listed, then I expect that that 
person would not be able to cope with doing the job.  And similarly, a 
person seeking the job needs to be able to cope with being actively 
de-selected.  (Although I do not want to see any names removed from the 
published list until the candidates are accepted by the review process.)

Another objection has been that it somehow would encourage politicking for 
the list to be published.  I do not follow this.  We are not discussing 
publishing the short list or decision process.  Anyone who would politic 
for the job if the list were public can do so currently.  After all, that 
person knows that they are on the list.

Yours,
Joel M. Halpern

PS: The one regard wherein I disagree with some of the supporters of making 
the list public is that I do not think that this is sufficient to empower 
the review process.  Nonetheless I think that the list of confirmed 
nominees should be public.

At 09:12 PM 3/30/02 -0500, Leslie Daigle wrote:
> Marshall,
>
> I illustrated my concerns in terms of the actions of the most
> recent NomCom, but I was trying to describe the general problem
> that NomComs are increasingly challenged by the task of identifying
> representative and broad-based sources of input.
>
> In that light, I don't think it's _fair_ to just ask the
> next NomCom to 'do something different'.  A year from now,
> we'll be complaining they didn't ask _enough_ people for
> input.  Or some other issue.
>
> If not an open nominee list, and not a tortured set of
> rules, can we as a community not come up with some more
> helpful guidelines -- for the future NomComs, or for the
> IETF community interfacing with them?
>
> Leslie.
>
>
> Marshall Rose wrote:
> >
> > > So, let's go back to the problem:
> > >
> > >       How do we ensure that the NomCom gets the relevant input
> > >       to its deliberations, while maintaining enough
> > >       confidentiality that honest and open information can
> > >       be input, and without turning this into a popularity
> > >       contest?
> > >
> > > Input is required for 2 different things:
> > >
> > >       . general input on what is needed for a given position
> > >
> > >       . specific input on nominees under consideration (or not)
> > >
> > > I would argue that some change to existing process is needed, because
> > > as it stands the NomCom is forced to identify the relevant
> > > sources of information and go solicit it.  The IETF is big
> > > enough that a random committee of 12 isn't likely to span it evenly.
> > > I don't think that broadcasting a message to all the WG chairs in an
> > > Area  (or even WG chairs + document authors) does it.  And, WG chairs
> > > & doc authors are not the only ones with important input.
> > >
> > > If opening up the list of nominees publicly doesn't do it either,
> > > we need another proposal...
> >
> > my proposal is "do nothing, but ask the nomcom to try something 
> different next year".
> >
> > one of the reasons we have ex-officio's is to provide pointers to 
> resources for the nomcom. i have no idea why the nomcom felt it necessary 
> to send out a blanket note like that.
> >
> > many years ago, when i was on the nomcom and asked to research a 
> particular area, i got some input from the ex-officio's on who to talk 
> to, and then i put together a list of both real-candidates and 
> non-candidates. after interviewing each resource for a while, i waited to 
> see who they mentioned. after the resource was talked out, i started 
> asking about non-candidates and real-candidates, explaining to the 
> resource that because i was doing this, they could make no reasonable 
> inference about who was being considered.
> >
> > in this fashion, i got useful input from several folks, and they had no 
> way of knowing who was really being considered. i felt this protected the 
> confidentiality of the real-candidates and also gave me a handy way of 
> doing a barium-test on the resources i talked to: each conversation had a 
> couple of unique non-candidates. so if a rumor about the nomcom 
> considering someone got leaked, i knew exactly who was doing the leaking...
> >
> > now perhaps this is too manipulative for folks. fine, i can live with that.
> >
> > what i do know is that publishing lists of candidates is a bad, bad 
> idea. just because some folks feel that this year's nomcom didn't handle 
> it as well as they might have, doesn't mean we should institutionalize 
> something much worse...
> >
> > /mtr
> >
> > ----------------------------------------------------------------
> > To subscribe or unsubscribe from this elist use the subscription
> > manager: <http://lists.elistx.com/subscribe>
>
> --
>
> -------------------------------------------------------------------
> "An essential element of a successful journey
>     is recognizing when you have arrived."
>    -- ThinkingCat
>
> Leslie Daigle
> leslie@thinkingcat.com
> -------------------------------------------------------------------
>
> ----------------------------------------------------------------
> To subscribe or unsubscribe from this elist use the subscription
> manager: <http://lists.elistx.com/subscribe>