Re: DISCUSSION: publish list of nominees?

[Theodore Tso <tytso@mit.edu>]

On Fri, Apr 05, 2002 at 03:39:47PM +0200, Brian E Carpenter wrote:
> b) we will clarify the role of the confirming bodies (and their
>    liaisons) in verifying that due process has been followed by NomCom.

One of the things which really should be clarified here is how input
is appropriate to be shared with the confirming bodies.

I'm still not comfortable with a process where the definition of "Due
Process" seems to be the confirming body asking a series of questions
of the form "Did you ask Foo?", "Did you solicit the input of Bar?",
etc.  (I've been told that this is quite common, and has happened in
multiple nomcom's.)

If that's "due process", then it implies that the Nomcom is supposed
to know all of the issues and where some of the personality conflicts
might have been hidden --- and the IETF has gotten big enough that you
can't guarantee that ten randomly selected people will have
necessarily witnessed all of the random cat fights that might have
happened in some area.

So if we're not going to "make public" the list of the names, is it
O.K. for nomcom to send send queiries (possibly with a semi-blinded
list, but realistically that only goes so far to hide the list of
people that they're interested in), and sending it to all working
group chairs and all people who have written an internet-draft in said
area?  I've heard a few people say that this is O.K., but in my mind,
I **really** can't see the difference between that and making the name
public.  The difference seems to be quite marginal --- and it is
significantly much more work that you're putting on nomcom's shoulders
(who doesn't have secretarial support, and has to deal with random
things like e-mail addresses breaking when @home or AT&T/Mediaone
suddenly breaks thousands and thousands of e-mail addresses with
little or no notice).

On the other hand, if people seem to think that a query to large
number of people is O.K. (but somehow putting the list on a website is
not), I guess I wouldn't have a problem with that as long as Nomcom
got some secretarial help to actually find and contact all of these
people.  

(This by the way is a problem not just when trying to find people to
contact for input, but also when trying to contact people who have
been nominated by their peers for some IAB or IESG position.  This
time around there was probably at least one or two people for which we
never were able to find an e-mail address, so they never got contacted
and asked if they were willing to participate in the process.  Hint:
when nominating people, give nomcom their e-mail address.  I spent a
very large amount of my time trying to track down people's
e-mail/contact information, and that's just stupid.)

							- Ted