Re: nomcom and confidentiality

[John C Klensin <john-ietf at jck.com>]

--On Tuesday, November 07, 2006 17:46 -0500 Ralph Droms 
<rdroms at cisco.com> wrote:

> Bob - depends on the meaning of "straw poll".  Any vote that
> results in an action should be restricted to the 10 voting
> members.  My understanding of "straw poll" is an opinion poll
> that results in no direct action.

Ralph, had you said "...results in no action (direct or 
indirect)", I would have completely agreed.    But there are 
lots of ways in which straw polls can be used to limit the range 
of further discussions or selections, and, for those, I share 
Bob's nervousness.

To be explicit about my concern here, rather than having it 
sound like a lot of theory, while I have every reason to believe 
that most, if not all, liaisons have behaved in an exemplary 
fashion, a liaison from body X, to a nominating committee that 
is selecting members of X, will have a tendency to either make 
suggestions about job requirements that results in cloning of 
the members of X or will have a tendency to axe-grind based on 
personal experiences within X.   Those two tendencies are 
somewhat in tension with each other, maybe that is enough. 
But, because we would like the nomcom process to be above 
suspicion, being clear about the appropriate boundaries of 
liaison behavior seems worth a little effort.

    john


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