--On Thursday, 31 August, 2006 17:30 -0400 Eastlake III
Donald-LDE008 <Donald(_dot_)Eastlake(_at_)motorola(_dot_)com> wrote:
John,
If the selection method is random, it makes no difference
whatsoever how the list of nomcom volunteers is ordered. It
only matters that the numbered list become fixed and be posted
before the selection information is available. Alphabetic or
the order they volunteered or any other order is perfectly
fine.
Agreed, except that an alphabetic sort is not, by any stretch of
the imagination, random. Phillip's suggestion of using a
well-established hash that is known to give good distributions
would work; there are many other methods that would work. But a
number of observable distribution issues make an alphabetic sort
on names unacceptably random if one is then going to use the
ordering for successive samplings/selections.
I want to stress that, given this mess has occurred, I would
find just about anything the Nomcom Chair decides to do
acceptable although I do not approve of his consulting the IETF
Chair (or IAB Chair) in the matter. But, if we are going to
make sure this problem does not occur in the future, I think we
should make the procedure as gaming-proof as possible. That, to
me, implies two requirements going forward:
(1) We get strong randomization of the selection process
(2) We do not redraw the entire Nomcom pool and _never_ do so
after anyone who has discretion has had an opportunity to see
the initial list of Nomcom members. If someone is selected (or
volunteers) and then determined to be ineligible, the people who
have already been selected by the mechanism specified stay
selected. Anything else just has a bad odor whether actual
improprieties are suspected or not.
In addition, I am extremely concerned by hints on this list that
the Secretariat's checking procedures ruled people ineligible to
volunteer who had, in fact, attended the correct number of
meetings. That, it seems to me, is a much larger threat to the
integrity of the Nomcom model and perceptions of trust in it
than any issue that impacts a single volunteer or even, within
broad limits, the randomization and Nomcom member selection
processes.
john
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