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Re: Consensus on the responsibility for qualifications? (Was: Re: Nomcom is responsible for IESG qualifications)

2013-03-13 13:48:16
On 03/13/13 14:27, Dave Crocker allegedly wrote:
The task I think I agreed to, on Monday, was to formulate language
changes to RFC 3777, to make this more clear.

Herewith:

   7. Unless otherwise specified, the advice and consent model is used
...
      2. The nominating committee selects candidates based on its
         understanding of the IETF community's consensus of the
         qualifications required and advises each confirming body of its
         respective candidates.

In practical terms, Nomcom is not in a position to conduct an actual
(formal) community-wide consensus process.  It can solicit comments and
it can gauge those comments.  But to characterize this sequence as an
"understanding of the IETF community's consensus" is unrealistic and
counterproductive, in my view.

So I suggest:

      2. The nominating committee selects candidates based on its
         determination of the requirements for the job, synthesized
         from the desires expressed by the IAB, IESG or IAOC (as
         appropriate), desires express by the community, and from the
         nominating committee's own assessment; it then advises each
         confirming body of its respective candidates; the nominating
         committee shall provide supporting materials that cover its
         selections, including the final version of requirements that
         the nominating committee used when making its selections;
         these requirements shall be made public after nominees are
         confirmed.

I'm not fine with your use of "requirements".  The thing is, there are
many "soft" requirements, i.e. the nomcom has a number considerations
that are important, but it must make tradeoffs.  Most alleged
requirements are not hard.

You could change "requirements" to "criteria".  Or perhaps "...
including the process the nominating committee used when making its
selections ...".  In any case calling everything the Nomcom takes into
consideration "requirements" will be confusing to future readers.

Scott

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