Re: Should a CB approve a slate or individuals?

[Brian E Carpenter <brian@hursley.ibm.com>]

I fully support Mike. This would be a major change in the
formal rules and the practice followed for the last ten years.
I have seen no discussion that would motivate or justify
such a change. The rule should stay as it is

  The confirming bodies review their respective slate ...[and]
  consent to some, all, or none of the candidates.

MSJ has proposed some other changes to this key sentence, but
this part shouldn't change. 

Contrary to Avri, I find nothing ambiguous in RFC 2727 - it clearly
implies a complete slate.

    Brian

Avri Doria wrote:
> 
> Michael StJohns wrote:
> 
>  > At 05:05 PM 3/31/2003 -0500, Avri Doria wrote:
>  >
>  >> Re: the question of reviewing a slate as whole or as individual
>  >> candidates.
>  >>
>  >> While more often the case in selecting the IAB then IESG, though
>  >> it does occur in the IESG as well, a slate is often picked for its
>  >> balance of talents.  The recommendation of the DT is that a slate
>  >> is sent to the CB as a whole and must be accepted as a whole.  In
>  >> rejecting a slate, the CB is certainly encouraged to indicate what
>  >> parts of the slate it finds unacceptable, but the NomCom can
>  >> reconsider the entire slate and resubmit a slate with different
>  >> candidates, even if some of the replaced candidates were acceptable
>  >> to the CB during its prior review.  It is in keeping with this
>  >> recommendation for the NomCom to submit a slate to the CB that does
>  >> not fill all open roles.  In this case, the presented slate counts
>  >> as a unit and its approval is not affected by any later submissions.
>  >> To reiterate, a slate can only be accepted in its entirety, but t
>  >> here is no rule stating that a slate must fill every vacancy - a
>  >> slate is defined as being a single list of names and positions
>  >> presented to the CB for approval.
>  >> It is considered approved and unchangeable once the CB notifies the
>  >> NomCom that it has been accepted.
>  >
>  >
>  >
>  > No.  Just no.  Its unfair and unreasonable to expect the CB to be able
>  > to balance individuals against a complete slate.  The slate represents
>  > no more than 1/2 of the sitting members of the body being appointed, the
>  > change of one or two individuals based on a rejection should not be
>  > considered to cause that much perturbation.  In any event, any imbalance
>  > can be fixed in the following year.
>  >
>  > Confirmations are discussed and decided upon based on the qualifications
>  > of an individual, not on the ability of the slate as a whole to succeed
>  > or fail.   If I were managing the confirmation process for the IAB
>  > (fortunately, that's Leslie's job), I wouldn't know how to frame the
>  > question of whether to accept or reject a slate based on whether one or
>  > more individuals were bad enough to prevent us from accepting the rest.
>  > It may be possible to frame this for a single rejection, but you start
>  > getting interesting combinatorial problems when you start thinking about
>  > more than one unacceptable person.
>  >
>  > Please, leave this as a confirmation of individuals.  If an individual
>  > fails of confirmation, it shouldn't be that traumatic to suggest an
>  > alternative, even if the balance among the whole slate isn't exactly
>  > what the Nomcom hoped it would be.  Think of it this way: if changing 1
>  > or 2 fully qualified candidates (out of 12 or 18 total members) causes
>  > so much perturbation,  there's a lot more wrong than the Nomcom can
>  > actually fix.
>  >
>  > The suggestion that partial slates could go forward also fails.  It
>  > needlessly extends the process without actually adding to the quality of
>  > the result.
>  >
> 
> I am curious to hear some discussion of the list on this issue.
> So far I think there have been only a few voices.  While I need
> to review the list again, I think I have heard one voice for
> voting as a slate and one against.
> 
> As for RFC2727, I think it was ambiguous on the notion of a slate
> of candidates versus single candidates.
> 
> a.