On Wed, Sep 17, 2014 at 2:21 PM, Yoav Nir
<ynir(_dot_)ietf(_at_)gmail(_dot_)com> wrote:
On Sep 17, 2014, at 8:18 PM, Phillip Hallam-Baker
<phill(_at_)hallambaker(_dot_)com> wrote:
Oh just increase the size of the NomCon and the issues go away.
I suggest expanding it to 100 members.
So, spend 10 times as many cycles on making the same decision? Would CFRG
consider a curve that was 10 times slower than the ones they are considering
right now?
No, increase the work load to the point where such discussions are no
longer feasible and they won't happen. Increasing the size of the
NOMCON would reduce the length of the discussions.
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.
Some ADs make trouble anyway,
Not enough.
My concern was more the IAB though. Having ten people who all think
the same way is pointless, nine of them are wasting their time.
That won't change even if we forgo the NomCom entirely and select ADs by a
true test of merit such as a bridge tournament or memorizing the most
episodes of Star Trek.
You are thinking in terms of cabals. The next step after NOMCON isn't
going to be either a bridge tournament or a Star Trek trivia contest.
It will be an open vote process with the same qualifications as for
the NOMCON.
Again, I am basing my prediction on observing how other organizations
with a closed appointment structure have fared over time. The most
common outcome is that the organization dies by attrition and is
replaced by another. But some organizations do manage to survive and
they do so by gradually opening up the system and making it more
democratic. The only exception to this rule are religious
organizations.
Changes will come when a series of incompetent NOMCONs make choices
that the organization can't accept. The diversity issue looks to be
the most likely flash point.