Re: Alternative (H2)

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

    Date:        Sat, 31 May 2003 15:35:14 -0400 (Eastern Daylight Time)
    From:        James M Galvin <galvin+ietf-nomcom@elistx.com>
    Message-ID:  <Pine.WNT.4.51.0305311532220.2816@office.elistx.com>

  | Looking at it the other way, if the confirming body can not agree that
  | the NOMCOM has done the best job it could have done, we want there to be
  | a deadlock because we want that issue to surface and be visible to the
  | community.

I know what you're getting at, but I think that if we ever have any of
the candidates confirmed by default, because the confirming body was unable
(or unwilling) to say yes or no, that will be quite visible enough (if
necessary, the rules can say that this needs to be notified on the
ietf-announce list - not necessarily specifying which candidate).

But I don't think we can allow ourselves to get into a situation where
we have only a half the IESG (and depending which year, perhaps no IETF
chair).  Having only half the IAB might be harmless enough, but for the
IESG I think the IETF as a whole would almost collapse.

Do recall that the conformation process is supposed to be just a check
that the nomcom process hasn't gone wild - in general we trust the nomcom
to have produced adequate results.   If the confirming body disagrees, fine,
and there's plenty of chance for deadlock (inter-group dispute) there.

But if the confirming body is just unable to make a decision, I think the
correct default is to trust the nomcom output.

For a (perhaps far fetched) example, consider would would happen should
some year, sometime during February, when the ISOC and IAB are both in the
process of confirming the nomcom's results, the ISOC is suddenly wound up
for some reason or other - it no longer exists.   The new IAB members have
not been confirmed.   I guess we could live with that until we complete a
revision of this doc and appoint a new confirming body, and they consider
the question.   But (I believe, and even if this is not correct now, it could
be at this unknown future time) the ISOC pays for the IAB phone calls for
their meetings.   No ISOC, no phone calls.  Confirmation discussions are too
sensitive for e-mail (or so the IAB has decided) - so no IESG confirmation
gets done either.   None of this because of anything even remotely connected
to the actual slate of candidates put forward by the nomcom.

In any of these kinds of cases (including where the conforming body is
simply deadlocked because of disagreements internally about the nomcom
results) I think the correct thing is to accept the nomcom output.  And
then come back here and figure out how to fix whatever went wrong, if a
fix is needed.

kre