+1 on the analysis.
I'm personally in favour of attaining more openness in the process IF we
can identify and address the real negatives (as a thoughtful process, in
advance).
Leslie.
Michael StJohns 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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Leslie Daigle
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