Re: DISCUSSION: rejecting candidates

[Dave Crocker <dcrocker@brandenburg.com>]

At 06:42 PM 4/13/2002 -0400, John C Klensin wrote:
> (iii) If they have to "flich someone" from the IAB to fill an
> IESG position after pushback from the IAB (or vice versa after
> pushback from the ISOC BoT


This all presumes that the role of the IAB or ISOC BoT review is to decide 
whether particular nominees are acceptable.

For the review body to be able to perform such selective analysis and 
approval adequately, they must have a comparable amount of information as 
the Nomcom and perform a comparable analysis of the trade-offs that go into 
making selections.

Not surprisingly, the review bodies cannot possibly satisfy either of these 
requirements.  They do not have anything approaching the level overall 
knowledge about the selection circumstances nor are they able to devote 
anything approaching the level of discussion and debate that takes place in 
a Nomcom.

Instead, it makes sense for the review bodies to ensure that Nomcom has 
conducted a competent process.  Such validation means much more than a 
simplistic review of the number of meetings or the number of candiates, or 
other such trivia.  It very much does mean reviewing the overall Nomcom 
process, and that certainly can and should include requiring Nomcom to 
explain the basis for various choices.

In fact a "surprising" Nomcom choice certainly should be challenged by the 
review body, on the theory that a surprising choice carries a higher 
possibility of erroneous process.  However different things can be 
challenged and the review body needs to be careful that its challenge has a 
constructive focus.

There is a very big difference between a review body effectively responding 
"please explain how you came to this extraordinary choice", versus 
effectively responding "the review body believes you have not considered 
matters adequately and need to talk to more people" or "the review body 
believes you have made a bad choice, choose someone else".

d/

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Dave Crocker <mailto:dave@tribalwise.com>
TribalWise, Inc. <http://www.tribalwise.com>
tel +1.408.246.8253; fax +1.408.850.1850