Re: Nomcom candidate name announcement alternatives

[Thomas Narten <narten@us.ibm.com>]

Russ White <ruwhite@cisco.com> writes:

> Three people can keep a secret if two of them are dead. What
> about 50?

"Theodore Ts'o" <tytso@mit.edu> writes:

> 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.  

There has been a repeated theme that when (say) 50 people are given
some information, that information is no longer secret and you might
as well make it public. I do not quite follow the logic here.

There were some 2001 persons at the Yokohama IETF (plus many more that
didn't make it at all). 50 is a rather small percentage of that. This
doesn't seem to me to automatically translate to "everybody finds
out".

Also, the "50" that were contacted would have been for a particular
position; a different set of folk would typically be contacted for
different positions (i.e, RTG vs. APPs, vs. ...).

Again I don't see this as coming anywhere close to translating into
the equivalent of everyone knowing the list of candidates.

> (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.)

2727 says:

      The nominating committee and confirming body members will be
      exposed to confidential information as a result of their
      deliberations, their interactions with those they consult, and
      from those who provide requested supporting information.  All
      members and all other participants are expected to handle this
      information in a manner consistent with its sensitivity.

I read this as saying folks whose opinions are asked are not free to
state who the nomcom asked them to provide feedback on. If this is
unclear, it needs fixing.

Thomas