Oh just increase the size of the NomCon and the issues go away.
I suggest expanding it to 100 members.
I am totally serious here and fully aware of the consequences. The
IETF thinks that it has adopted a perfect and unique approach to
governance. Well so did the many other organizations that have tried
similar. And if you watch what has happened to those organizations
over time it is what has happened in the IETF.
The original mechanism for choosing leaders was that they were the
ARPA program managers. Then as the IETF emerged as a distinct entity
and people started to worry about things such as getting insurance,
process started to emerge. The original process was a hermetic closed
politburo operating in secret which is actually a very common form of
organization in communities that consider themselves to be very open.
The failure modes can be quite spectacular. The old UK left had a
series of faction splits due to Gerry Healy (now deceased) engaging in
the behavior Jimmy Saville was accused of after his demise and several
UK celebs have been sentenced to prison terms for recently. There is
currently a similar scandal emerging in the skepticism/atheism
community. What brought down the old IETF cabal was the Kobe carve up.
Since then the NOMCON has been gradually reformed. And at each step
everyone tells me that the reforms I propose are utterly unacceptable
and impossible and ten years later they do them anyway and there are
no problems.
There once was a time when the idea of people knowing which posts were
open was considered unacceptable. The assumption was that any AD
willing to be reappointed would be. The idea of an expectation of a
two consecutive term limit was an innovation. Eventually it was
accepted that the world would not come to an end if the names of
nominees being considered were made public. And this had the predicted
and intended effect of turning the nomination process into one where
the NOMCON solicited input from the IETF at large.
At the moment the process is reasonably effective in avoiding really
bad appointments. But it is also pretty good at excluding
troublemakers and wildcards. And you need those sort of people every
so often to shake things up. Being selected by ten people whose names
were picked out of a hat guarantees that no AD, IAB or IETF chair can
ever claim a mandate to change anything in the organization.