+1
--On Monday, 15 September, 2008 14:42 -0400 Michael StJohns
<mstjohns(_at_)comcast(_dot_)net> wrote:
At 12:29 PM 9/15/2008, Dave CROCKER wrote:
Leslie Daigle wrote:
We need
to have some cultural sophistication if we're going to ask
Sue to run against incumbent Bob openly, given that Sue's
WG has documents waiting for Bob's approval.
I hope that this observation scares folk as much as it
should. The implication that an incumbent AD is to be
feared implies that ADs have far too much power.
This isn't only about AD power, it's about perception of
conflict of interest. Let's say the AD does bounce the
documents, refuses to charter a WG, or refuses to let Sue act
as WG chair - mainly because the AD thinks the documents are
poorly structured, the WG is a bad idea technically, or Sue
would be incompetent as a WG chair. Sue, since she's
announced her candidacy, complains that the AD has been mean
to her because she was running against him.
This might be a specious argument, but there are enough
conspiracy theorists hanging about the IETF to make the issue
not about how good Sue or her products are, but about whether
or not the AD is abusing his/her power against a political
opponent. Without Sue's public candidacy, the argument would
hopefully tend to stay closer to the technical side of things.
And the Nomcom would still be able to consider whether or not
there might be an AD abuse of power without getting the
political conflict of interest mix-in confusion.
Secondly, it's not really useful (to the whole system) if
only some candidates declare themselves publicly.
That's just plain wrong.
If a candidate wishes to encourage openness and encourage a
broader base of input to Nomcom, they can and should
disclose their candidacy. Nomcom will benefit from having
better information, for the candidates who choose to
publicly disclose their candidacy, because more people will
know that comments on a particular candidate are needed.
No candidate need wait for other candidates to agree to this.
Contrary to your view, it is a very simple decision.
Contrary to your view it is a very complex decision.
There are a number of reasons for an all or nothing approach
and where all agree to the terms:
1) The nomcom selects (and the CB confirms) a candidate who
did not make their candidacy public. I would expect that at
least a few folks (Dave!) would complain loudly about this,
even though there was no formal requirement. I would prefer
the Nomcom not feel this pressure unless all candidates were
required to submit publicly.
2) The nomcom initiates a second round of solicitations, even
though a number of candidates have made their candidacy
public. The reasons for doing this might be a desire for more
candidates, a desire for better candidates, etc. It might
still end up selecting the non-public candidates, but would
find it harder to select the public ones (at least to my point
of view). Also, the amount of second guessing the Nomcom
would encounter would make their deliberations a bit more
difficult.
3) A public candidate is rejected for reasons which would have
probably also disqualified the non-public candidate, but the
non-public candidate is selected because the data about this
disqualification wasn't shared with the Nomcom.
4) A public candidate is selected because no one on the nomcom
knew him/her, but they got lots of "select him" emails - also
from people they didn't know. A better, but non-public
candidate was considered, but not selected in the face of the
large number of emails for this one candidate. Quantity
triumphs over quality.
So its really not a fair and level playing ground. Either all
should do it or none.
Note that there are arguments that go the other way - but most
of those could somewhat be cured by the non-public candidate
making things public. I'm not arguing that making candidacy
public is the way to go - and in fact I see more problems that
not with going that way, but I am arguing that a voluntary
approach such as Pete is recommending is worse than either of
the two alternatives.
More importantly, it is exactly the sort of decision that can
and should be individual and has no need to wait for some
magic group decision or formal IETF policy -- a decision
that we've solidly demonstrated will not get made.
d/
--
Dave Crocker
Brandenburg InternetWorking
bbiw.net
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