Re: Possible extra "oral tradition" for draft-ietf-nomcom-rfc2727bis-01.txt

[Theodore Ts'o <tytso@mit.edu>]

On Tue, Jul 16, 2002 at 08:38:26AM -0400, Joel M. Halpern wrote:
> The reason that the nomcom now goes and asks a set of people is that 
> earlier nomcoms did not even do that.  The set of people that was / is 
> suggested to the nomcom to contact is not expect / understood to be 
> comprehensive.  It was (at the time, and still is as far as I can tell) the 
> only list that is not absurdly large and is well defined.  (Telling the 
> nomcom "talk to more people" is not in and of itself a helpful suggestions.)

One observation: if the list of nomines is supposedly "secret", and
the nomcom is sending a (partially blinded) list to a very large set
of people, at what point is it so close to "public" that it might as
well be fully public?  It certainly is less effort than trying to
create this very large list of inviduals to ask.

In some cases, the very large list was "all working group chairs and
all authors of any I-D's in a particular area" --- minus people whose
e-mail address had changed (say, due to @home's sudden shutdown).
This is a very large list, and so after a partially blinded list is
sent to such a large list of people, it might as well be public, I
would argue.  And yet, there were some people who didn't manage to get
their opinions solicited via this process, and in some cases, they did
step forward and whine a lot.  

(By the way: it is a myth is that the nomcom can in any way bind the
people from whom they solicit opinions that they not pass the list on
any further.  The nomcom can request this, of course, but there is
legally binding way to make this requirement --- and in fact the only
requirement is upon the nomcom members and the confirming bodies.
Nominees and people from whom opinions are solicited are currently
free to say anything they want to the entire world.)

> It is not possible for the nomcom to find on its own all the people who 
> legiitmately have helpful input.  The premise that extra input (before 
> minds are made up) can not possibly be helpful seems unlikely to be 
> accurate.

I couldn't agree more.

						- Ted