Re: CONSENSUS: should there be term limits?

[Theodore Tso <tytso@mit.edu>]

On Thu, Mar 28, 2002 at 09:30:00AM -0800, Randy Bush wrote:
> 
> from 2727 2(1)
> 
>    (1)  The principal functions of the nominating committee are to
>         review the open IESG and IAB positions and to either nominate
>         its incumbent or recruit a superior candidate.
>                                  ^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^

Ah, but what does a "superior candidate" **mean**?  I am sure we could
find some person who believes that after eight years, anybody,
including a Siberian Husky, might be considered a "superior
candidate".

You're confident you know what a "superior candidate" means.  Sure.
But does your definition match up with other people?  This is why I
believe having some rough guidelines which represent the sense of the
community is a good thing.  Of course, nomcom will can always ignore
these guidelines, and there will always be situations which we can't
plan for.  So ultimately, we have to trust in the good faith and wise
judgement of the voting nomcom members.  

That being said, I strongly believe that having an public discussion
about criteria which is open to the entire community about criteria is
better than having a closed discussion amongst a subset of a
self-selected sample of the community.  Maybe we need to have a public
discussion over the criteria that we should use to select our leaders
more often --- say, every three years or so; if so, maybe that should
be in the process.

Going back to the original topic, though, if the sense of the
community is that tradeoffs surrounding term limits are a bad thing,
then let's say so, explicitly.

					- Ted