Re: DISCUSSION: rejecting candidates

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

On Thu, 11 Apr 2002, Brian E Carpenter wrote:

> Date: Thu, 11 Apr 2002 11:40:08 +0200
> From: Brian E Carpenter <brian@hursley.ibm.com>
> To: Donald Eastlake 3rd <dee3@torque.pothole.com>
> Cc: ietf-nomcom <ietf-nomcom@lists.elistx.com>
> Subject: Re: DISCUSSION: rejecting candidates
>
> Donald Eastlake 3rd wrote:
> ...
> > > When I think about it, extra time would make this less of a problem. The timing
> > > today is very tight and a rejection would create a real panic, just when the
> > > I-Ds are raining down on us by the hundreds.
> >
> > Work expands to fill the available time.
>
> I really don't think that's fair comment.

Whether you like it or not, it is general trend of human nature. Whether
the nomcom has 3 or 6 or 9 or 12 months to do its work, most nomcoms
will do much of the final decision making, especially in difficult
cases, as late as they think will work based on the hard deadlines that
exist (IETF meeting date backed off by the serialization of the
confirming bodies decision times).

>                                       The people likely to be involved
> in NomCom and in one of the approving bodies (the IAB) are more or less
> by definition people with a strong commitment to IETF participation, which
> in my experience means that in the last 3 weeks before a meeting, one needs
> to study several tens of complicated drafts as well as doing a day job.
> It really is the worst moment of all to be forced to prioritize tricky
> personnel-oriented decisions.

My point is that most nomcoms have frequently already done an ordering
of plausible available candidates. When someone withdraws, apparently
the most common reason for a last minute change, you just have a
conference call to confirm that people haven't come up with anything
that would change the existing ordering and go to the next name on the
list.

>                             Stretching it out to maybe 6 weeks would
> make a significant difference, by avoiding the peak of pre-IETF work.

While it all depends on the nomcom members and primarily on the chair,
giving the nomcom more calendar time for its work will not always
translate into it making decisions early. In human affairs, the pace of
work tends to increase as the deadline approaches. One of the major
benefits of having physical IETF meetings and, to a lesser extent,
having the 6 month ID expiration is to provide artificial deadlines to
get things moving. How exactly are you going to get nomcoms to send in
their candidates to the confirming bodies weeks early when they really
REALLY are having trouble finding someone for that hard to fill IESG
position and are sure another week or two of work will find a much
better candidate, especially when no one has ever been rejected (as far
as I know) so you are expecting them to hustle extra hard and send in
names weeks early based on a hypothetical?

>    Brian

Donald