RE: guidance on avoiding too many people from one company/group

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

Trust is an enormous burden and should not be imposed unnecessarily. 
When I first pushed the algorithm now described in RFC 2777, many people
posted messages saying I was being ridiculous, that the nomcom chair had 
to be totally trusted so there was no reason to provide publicly 
verifiable fair selection of nomcom members, etc., etc. But every former 
nomcom chair who expressed an opinion (including myself) favored that 
change and wished to be relieved of the burden of trust in this case.

I would also note that the nomcom operates in private but the selection
and this volunteering to decline selection are public. If a nomcom
member were to be under pressure to do something for their employer in
the nomcom, the confidentiality of operation protects them. No so with
declining selection. What if it would cause them to lose a standards
participation bonus? For example, my current employer, Motorola has a
four tiered scale of annual bonuses for standards participation. Are you
sure that if "we simply ask", people will decline when it might effect
their pocket book?

While the nomcom system would not work without a sufficient amount of
trust, in this case I certainly want a mandatory rule.

Thanks,
Donald

On Tue, 12 Nov 2002, Christian Huitema wrote:

> Date: Tue, 12 Nov 2002 09:12:51 -0800
> From: Christian Huitema <huitema@windows.microsoft.com>
> To: Donald Eastlake 3rd <dee3@torque.pothole.com>,
>      ietf-nomcom <ietf-nomcom@lists.elistx.com>
> Subject: RE: guidance on avoiding too many people from one company/group
> 
> > Or, from another point of view, you can consider the string comparison
> > on the affiliations, as posted, to be part of the algorithm.
> 
> The system, to a large extent, is based on trust. We trust nomcom
> volunteers to exercise their best judgment and select the next batch of
> area directors and IAB members. So, I suggest that we simply ask
> selected nomcom members to decline selection if there are already two
> members selected with the same affiliation. In the case they would not,
> we have checks, e.g. publication of the nomcom member list to the IETF,
> approval of the selections by IAB & ISOC. 
> 
> -- Christian Huitema 
======================================================================
 Donald E. Eastlake 3rd                       dee3@torque.pothole.com
 155 Beaver Street              +1-508-634-2066(h) +1-508-851-8280(w)
 Milford, MA 01757 USA                   Donald.Eastlake@motorola.com