Brian,
Currently, to obtain
input from a more diverse set of people, Nomcomm has to guess who is
appropriate to ask & hope that a reasonable sampling of them will be
willing/interested in responding.
=> Ok, since I think it will lead to the same effect (widely known
nominees) ...
One difference is that we wouldn't have to update the BCP, since there
would be no overt breach of confidentiality. So next year's NomCom
could simply do this without further bureaucracy.
If I understand the above, you are saying that sending a list of nominees to
anyone who asks for it is somehow maintaining confidentiality whereas
publishing the list openly is obviously not. If my understanding of your
suggestion is correct, it is difficult to understand why anyone would think
that the "promise" of confidentiality by the requestor would in any way be a
meaningful barrier.
We already have a pattern of serious confidentiality failures in the nomcom
itself. The difference is that is occurs within a group of "insiders".
Let's be a little bit realistic about human behavior: If you are willing to
hand out the list to anyone who is willing to claim that they will maintain
confidentiality, then you are willing to hand it out to anyone.
Except that you are doing it with more bureaucracy.
I'm going to ask this year's Nomcom chair to see if this year's
candidates can answer the question "would you have run if your name
had been made public?"
As with so many IETF efforts to make assessments about human behavior,
such a question is going to have limited or no practical benefit. In
all likelihood, it will do damage, because people will think the
results mean something they don't.
Here's why:
A survey question, especially of this type, is useful for assessing
peoples *attitudes*, but attitudes do not strictly determine behavior.
As a rule, self-report survey questions -- asking people to assess
their own behavior, past present or future -- is notoriously
inaccurate.
In general, what is happening in this discussion is attending only to
the desires of the candidates and is ignoring the desires of the
community, as well as the needs of the process. The community desires
to provide feedback on candidates. The process requires an adequate
breadth and depth of information about candidates.
In spite of the fact the nomcoms are diligent in doing polling for
information, there are significant biasing aspects to their sampling
method. They pretty much go only to IETF management people.
Further, the claim that keeping the list secret is somehow essential
ignores broad history for similar 'cultures'.
Open communities have open candidate lists, so there can be open
consideration and feedback by the community.
An Area Director has the ability to sway and even block strategic
community decisions.
If they cannot stand up to public scrutiny during the selection
process, how accountable are they likely to feel to the community after
they are selected?
The IETF process was designed to entail open debate and compromise
(negotiation), with the goal of balancing both technical requirements
and community support. The current nomcom process fails to ensure the
latter.
d/
---
Dave Crocker
Brandenburg InternetWorking
+1.408.246.8253
dcrocker a t ...
WE'VE MOVED to: www.bbiw.net
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