Re: A proposal for publishing nominee names

[Robert Elz <kre@munnari.OZ.AU>]

    Date:        Mon, 15 Jul 2002 11:05:41 +0200
    From:        Brian E Carpenter <brian@hursley.ibm.com>
    Message-ID:  <3D329065.B7665E42@hursley.ibm.com>

  | I suggest that we need a deadline for this continued discussion - since we
  | don't want it to infect this year's NomCom process with uncertainty.

There was another issue discussed, which was generally agreed in the
meeting, which perhaps I cam make a totally personal and unofficial
comment about (but I hope there won't be much disagreement)...

Avri reported on the milestones as set for the WG, and current progress.
It is clear that the milestones aren't going to be met - the hope at the
minute is that the doc might just be done [my addition, not from the
meeting: but perhaps not through the RFC editor's queue] by the time of
the next IETF meeting.   All going well.

That being the case, there was the question of what should be done for this
year's nomcom, which should be well underway by then.  There seemed to be
3 options.
1. tell the coming nomcom to use the I-D, whatever its state or status
2. try very hard to get this doc published, even if incomplete, before
it is too late for this year [Aside again: would almost mean publish
what now exists]
3. this year's nomcom ignores this doc, and it applies first to next year's.

Where this matters most in the very near term is wrt the timelines.

As I understood the general sense of the room (in that no-one objected,
I believe) the approach was to be to tell the nomcom to follow this I-D
to the extent it is not inconsistent with the current RFC.

That is, where it provides clarification etc.   And it is (was) believed
that the timelines would be one of those issues - that the ones in the
draft should be used, and they wouldn't be inconsistent with rfc2727.

And now to extrapolate a little, since the issue wasn't discussed, I'd
assume that revealing lists of names would be inconsistent with 2727, and
so unless this doc is published (or at the least, approved) before the
issue arises, no name publishing would happen this year, whatever is
decided for this doc.

  | And those who don't like Harald's proposal should probably make a precise
  | counter-proposal at this point. 

The question was asked as to who supports no revealing of names, and
who supports some kind of list being published, details to be worked
out later.   That one produced no clear result.

With that, the counter proposal is obviously "change nothing", leave the
names confidential.  That's a simple one to make precisely.

I'll make a side comment here on how the questions for this can/should be
asked, and what effects that can have on the outcomes.

Some (perhaps even more than just a few) might know that Australia
went through a process of deciding if it wanted to become a republic
or not (as opposed to remaining a part of the British Monarchy).

Opinion polls clearly showed that most Australians were in favour of
the change.   But then there were two ways this could be done - one
was to have an appointed president, much as Australia currently has
an appointed Governor General (the practical head of state, as the
Queen's representative in Australia) - and as I believe is done in
Eire, or whether it should be an elected head of state (as in the US,
France, Russia - though it would be without all the electoral weirdness
of those systems, and for a person with almost no actual power, a
figurehead position).   Of those who supported becoming a republic,
the majority supported the latter position (though I think not by a lot).

By carefully asking the right questions down the line, Australia is still
not a republic.   That is, at a convention, with no actual powers, ask
if we want a republic.  Answer: yes.  Which kind?  Here the monarchsists
support those for an appointed president, and together, they're the
majority, so that's the model adopted.   Then that question goes in a
referendum to the people - here the monarchists and the people who want
to elect the president together vote down the appointed president model.
Hence, "no" is the answer, and no republic.

The republicans, no big surprise, really wanted a binding question of
"Do we want to be a republic" asked, which probably would have resulted
in a "yes" answer, and then there would have been another vote on
the model, with the "appointed president" winning on a combination of
the 2 groups who wanted anything but an elected president.

Either way, the most popular individual model - the elected president,
doesn't happen.

The point of that story is that here in this WG much the same state
exists.   We can have no change, or we can announce lists of names
with one set of rules or another (the one difference here is that there
isn't a clear mandate in favour of some form of list being made public).

Unless we know all the proposals, and consider them together, with no
side questions binding us along the way, we can be maneuvered in a
similar way (as both groups in Aust were attempting) to get a result
that is really only supported by a minority (and not even the biggest
minority support - probably the smallest).

kre