Re: Last Call: draft-dawkins-nomcom-openlist (Nominating Committee Process: Open Disclosure of Willing Nominees) to BCP

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

--On Wednesday, June 17, 2009 10:47 -0400 "Joel M. Halpern"
<jmh at joelhalpern.com> wrote:

> I really think we want to stay away from any statement which
> implies anything about the nominees views about anyone.
> I do not think it is reasonable or practical to try to include
> disclaimers in the list of nominees about eveyr
> misapprehension that readers of the list may form.
> We ought not be making any public statement about the nominees
> degree of willingness to serve, degree of desire for change or
> stability, or any other opinion about the nominee.  We are
> simply letting folks know that the nominee exists.
> 
> If we absolutely have to have a stronger disclaimer, I would
> think it would need to be quite general, not specific about
> nominees opinions on any one dimension.  And certainly not a
> list of thing on which the nominee is not expressing an
> opinion in public.

And a strong disclaimer, perhaps any disclaimer, that applies to
all nominees would rapidly turn into boilerplate, i.e., a waste
of time that almost no one reads and fewer take seriously.

As we have seen in last year's round, there is nothing in the
confidentiality requirements that prevents a nominee from
posting anything he or she likes to the IETF list (or
elsewhere).  Presumably attacks on other candidates would be
frowned upon, both by the community as a whole and by a Nomcom
that was trying to evaluate whether the Nominee understood the
IETF well enough to play well with others.  And, if someone
wanted to post a public note saying "I think Elmer Fudd is doing
a really good job as Duck-hunting AD; I was asked to put my name
in and did so but I'm really not interested in the role unless
Elmer really doesn't want to serve another term", I think we
should neither encourage nor discourage that in any of these
documents.

    john