To state my point, I can support what Joel already said:- We should not hold up openlist because of John's proposal, as the latter is a rather radical change to the existing process. IMHO John's proposal belongs to a 3777bis-like discussion, whereas openlist is just an optimization of 3777.
- I share Joel's concerns as NomCom's task is to select a whole group of people that needs to address many tasks as a group. Balance of skills and compatibility of people within this group are of high importance for the good of the community. As I understood John's proposal, it limits the possibilities of NomCom to select a group that meets the mentioned requirements. Even with the current rules this can be really challenging.
cheers, Bernie On Fri, 19 Jun 2009, Joel M. Halpern wrote:
Actually, if I thought the case below was the likely worst problem with the proposed separated appointment, then whatever my overall reaction was, it would be mild. The problem you describe is clearly one we can live with.Before I comment on Barry's note, and John's suggestion further, let me make a different point. John suggested in one of his notes that approving the current open-list change would be a distraction from evaluating his proposal. I would strongly disagree.It is possible, and even practical, to approve the open-list change NOW.This will allow the current nomcom (that Mary is chairing) to make use of the open-list procedure.There is no way we are going to approve John's proposed change quickly.Can we please approve the open-list procedure, even while we discuss whether we want to make larger changes. I can not speak for anyone else, but I do not see an argument of the form "We just approved X, so we should not consider very different Y just now" to be an acceptable response to the idea once we have approved open-list.Returning to John's proposal, as I said, my concern is not with the case of a strong AD and a hypothetical superstar new nominee. My concern is on the other end. And I suspect (although it is always hard to tell, even in face-to-face discussions much less email), that John's and my basic disagreement comes much more when there is no superstar, or even outstanding candidate.THe basic problem is when it is not clear cut whether the nomcom should re-appoint a given sitting individual. Assume that the person has served two terms. (The single term cases confuse the issue.) We do not, and should not in my opinion, have a rule that says "out after two." So the nomcom has to evaluate the person. They have to evaluate how well that person is doing their job. How well that person will fit with the partially known set of other people both in terms of style and in terms of skills. (I have been told of cases where the nomcom litterally had to chose between people because two people could not serve together. Also, sometimes nomcoms will use other appointments to compensate for weaknesses in one appointment.) And I consider it unacceptable to just leave the seat unfilled if we have someone who can probably do a decent job. But I would hate to have to do an initial round appointing someone who is only expected to probably do a decent job.Sometimes, if the nomcom beats the bushes a bit, good nominees surface. Sometimes, when the nomcom beats the bushes, they just get scratches on their hands. Failing to appoint an AD because the procedure says "you can not go back to the decent but not great candidate you passed over because he is an incumbent" seems like a bad box to put yourself in.Yours, Joel M. Halpern Barry Leiba wrote:There's a lot of stuff here, and I've set it aside and come back to it a few times. When I first read John's proposal, I thought many of the same things that Joel mentioned, about giving the NomCom more options to think of the slate holistically, rather than breaking the process down into stages, and so on. The further discussion has given me a different understanding. As I see it, the main failure mode in John's proposal is this one: There is an incumbent that the NomCom will be happy to return to her position, with little or no reservation. And there is at least one *significantly* better candidate who would volunteer for the position if the NomCom chose to open it up. I suggest that the other cases are either neutral or show the new proposal as better than what we have. So let's consider how likely the failure mode is to happen, and the relative effect a failure has on the IETF. I can't speak to the likelihood, but I can suggest that with the current system, it's not just the NomCom that would happily reappoint the incumbent. The community as a whole probably knows that she's doing well and will likely be reappointed, and so history shows that there are likely to be few who volunteer for her spot. That means that with the current system, we probably won't have much of a choice anyway, and so the superstar replacement probably won't be available anyway. In other words, it probably turns into a failure mode for both systems, old as well as new. As to the effect the failure has: By definition, the IETF has not gotten the optimal leader in that position. But the IETF *does* have an effective leader whom the NomCom is happy with. It strikes me that that's not so bad -- not a very serious failure. And, so, opposing my initial "gut" response (and with the understanding that I have not served on a NomCom), I find myself agreeing with John. Barry_______________________________________________ ietf-nomcom mailing list ietf-nomcom at ietf.org https://www.ietf.org/mailman/listinfo/ietf-nomcom
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