Subject: RE: Complaining about ADs to Nomcom (Re: Voting (again))

From: "Soliman, Hesham" <[email-masked]>
Date: Wed, 4 May 2005 14:53:51 -0400

> At 01:10 PM 5/4/2005, Soliman, Hesham wrote:
 > >  > One way to open up the process would be to allow any participant
 > >  > to personally request a list of candidates from Nomcom, against
 > >  > a personal non-disclosure promise. (Not my idea; this 
 > was suggested
 > >  > during last week's IESG retreat.)
 > >
 > >=> If we do that we may as well put the list on the web. 
 > How do we define
 > >"participant"?
 > 
 > There is a difference between having participants who are 
 > interested in 
 > providing feedback ask for a copy of the list, with a promise of 
 > confidentiality, and give feedback - versus having that information 
 > publicly available.  This sounds useful to me.
 > 
 > I don't think that "participant" really needs to be defined. 
 >  Those who 
 > will be interested are those who are involved.  Currently, 
 > to obtain input 
 > from a more diverse set of people, Nomcomm has to guess who 
 > is appropriate 
 > to ask & hope that a reasonable sampling of them will be 
 > willing/interested 
 > in responding.

=> Ok, since I think it will lead to the same effect (widely known nominees)
I'm fine with that suggestion. 
Personally, I don't see the difference between doing what you describe
above and sending the list of nominees to this mailing list. But either
option is definitely better than what we have today IMHO.

Hesham

 > Alia

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From: Brian E Carpenter <[email-masked]>
Date: Mon, 09 May 2005 16:09:25 +0200

> option is definitely better than what we have today IMHO.

One difference is that we wouldn't have to update the BCP, since there
would be no overt breach of confidentiality. So next year's NomCom
could simply do this without further bureaucracy.

I'm going to ask this year's Nomcom chair to see if this year's
candidates can answer the question "would you have run if your name
had been made public?"

    Brian

---

From: Leslie Daigle <[email-masked]>
Date: Mon, 09 May 2005 11:35:54 -0400

Actually, I'm not sure I agree (that it's a good plan, or better
to do it this way than update the BCP).

When the NomCom WG was discussing this as part of creating RFC3777,
I was initially a proponent of the "publish the candidate list!"
perspective. I will admit to having been swayed by the arguments
that it increases the likelihood of scaring off potential candidates,
requires the freezing the candidate list, exposes the nomcom to second
guessing, and inevitably provokes electioneering.

Further, I also wonder what happens *after* the NomCom selections are
done. I.e., how many people will not have complaints taken seriously
because "they're just mad they were not selected".

So,

	1/ I'm not sure it's better to have a website that "interested
	   people" can subscribe to at the cost of agreeing to maintain
	   confidentiality than what we have today or going to a full
	   open model.  It has the chance of significantly increasing
	   the "whisper group", and doesn't really solve any of the
	   negatives listed above.

	2/ If we want to change the model, we should update the BCP, and
	   take the time to consciously re-evaluate the upsides and
	   downsides we know to exist with closed or open candidate
	   lists.

If we (the IETF community) genuinely want more openness, we should do
that, and get on with dealing with the negative sides we know will
exist.  Let's not just go halfway and get the worst of both models.

Leslie.

Brian E Carpenter wrote:
>>  > >  > a personal non-disclosure promise. (Not my idea; this  > was 
>> suggested
>>  > >=> If we do that we may as well put the list on the web.  > How do 
>> we define
>>  > >"participant"?
>>  >  > There is a difference between having participants who are  > 
>> interested in  > providing feedback ask for a copy of the list, with a 
>> promise of  > confidentiality, and give feedback - versus having that 
>> information  > publicly available.  This sounds useful to me.
>>  >  > I don't think that "participant" really needs to be defined.  >  
>> Those who  > will be interested are those who are involved.  
>> Currently,  > to obtain input  > from a more diverse set of people, 
>> Nomcomm has to guess who  > is appropriate  > to ask & hope that a 
>> reasonable sampling of them will be  > willing/interested  > in 
>> responding.
>>
>> I'm fine with that suggestion. Personally, I don't see the difference 
>> between doing what you describe

---

From: Dave Crocker <[email-masked]>
Date: Mon, 9 May 2005 09:27:09 -0700

Brian,

> > >     Currently, to obtain
> > >  input from a more diverse set of people, Nomcomm has to guess who is
> > >  appropriate to ask & hope that a reasonable sampling of them will be
> > >  willing/interested in responding.
> > >
> >  => Ok, since I think it will lead to the same effect (widely known
> >  nominees) ...
> >

If I understand the above, you are saying that sending a list of nominees to 
anyone who asks for it is somehow maintaining confidentiality whereas 
publishing the list openly is obviously not.  If my understanding of your 
suggestion is correct, it is difficult to understand why anyone would think 
that the "promise" of confidentiality by the requestor would in any way be a 
meaningful barrier.

We already have a pattern of serious confidentiality failures in the nomcom 
itself.  The difference is that is occurs within a group of "insiders".

Let's be a little bit realistic about human behavior:  If you are willing to 
hand out the list to anyone who is willing to claim that they will maintain 
confidentiality, then you are willing to hand it out to anyone.

Except that you are doing it with more bureaucracy.

>  candidates can answer the question "would you have run if your name

As with so many IETF efforts to make assessments about human behavior, 
such a question is going to have limited or no practical benefit.  In 
all likelihood, it will do damage, because people will think the 
results mean something they don't.

Here's why:

A survey question, especially of this type, is useful for assessing 
peoples *attitudes*, but attitudes do not strictly determine behavior. 

As a rule, self-report survey questions -- asking people to assess 
their own behavior, past present or future -- is notoriously 
inaccurate.

In general, what is happening in this discussion is attending only to 
the desires of the candidates and is ignoring the desires of the 
community, as well as the needs of the process.  The community desires 
to provide feedback on candidates.  The process requires an adequate 
breadth and depth of information about candidates.

In spite of the fact the nomcoms are diligent in doing polling for 
information, there are significant biasing aspects to their sampling 
method.  They pretty much go only to IETF management people.

Further, the claim that keeping the list secret is somehow essential 
ignores broad history for similar 'cultures'.

Open communities have open candidate lists, so there can be open 
consideration and feedback by the community. 

An Area Director has the ability to sway and even block strategic 
community decisions.  

If they cannot stand up to public scrutiny during the selection 
process, how accountable are they likely to feel to the community after 
they are selected?

The IETF process was designed to entail open debate and compromise 
(negotiation), with the goal of balancing both technical requirements 
and community support.  The current nomcom process fails to ensure the 
latter.

  d/
  ---
  Dave Crocker
  Brandenburg InternetWorking
  +1.408.246.8253
  dcrocker  a t ...
  WE'VE MOVED to:  www.bbiw.net

---

From: Lakshminath Dondeti <[email-masked]>
Date: Mon, 09 May 2005 12:55:18 -0400

Hi,

In the current Nomcom, a few of us compiled lists of all WG contributors 
(chairs, advisers, current I-D editors and authors) within each area; 
and our Nomcom chair used a script to randomly select a subset from 
those lists, and then used a 2-step process to seek feedback.  The first 
was to ask each potential feedback provider whether he/she would agree 
to keep the list of candidates confidential, and the second to ask for 
feedback, with the option of providing it anonymously.

Sure the above process could be tweaked, but as it is does not result in 
Nomcoms going "only to IETF management people" for feedback.  Does it 
possibly exclude folks who are enthusiastic about providing feedback?  
Yes, but I think overall, it is quite fair.

I do think sending the candidate lists to [email-masked] for feedback has 
the downside potential of everyone commenting on a few of the candidates 
or lists (i.e., areas).  That, if/when happens, is practically useless 
for 2 reasons: Nomcom doesn't get feedback on all lists, and a huge 
amount of feedback might be impossible to parse and compile for humans :-).

best regards,
Lakshminath

---

From: Melinda Shore <[email-masked]>
Date: Mon, 9 May 2005 13:26:20 -0400

I'm actually not particularly convinced that publicizing the list
of names would narrow the candidate pool particularly, but it does
seem to me that by making electioneering a more pressing piece of
the process (there's electioneering now, but it's not significant)
and moving the process closer to voting by having done so, there
would be a fundamental shift in the ethos of the organization.  Not
that that's necessarily a bad thing, but I do think it's a decision
that should be made deliberately rather than having it accidentally
fall out of the solution to some other problem.

Melinda

---

From: Scott W Brim <[email-masked]>
Date: Mon, 09 May 2005 13:42:28 -0400

I don't understand why making names public would increase
electioneering over what we already have.

---

From: Melinda Shore <[email-masked]>
Date: Mon, 9 May 2005 13:49:11 -0400

> electioneering over what we already have.

"Electioneering" is perhaps the wrong word, since it implies
behavior on the part of the candidates.  What I'm thinking about
is pressure from interested parties.  Right now, for example, the
process does a pretty good job of protecting itself from situations
in which a company decides that it really needs to have someone on
the IESG, or ones in which a bunch of people want to push a
particular technology through and need to get IESG support.

Melinda

---

From: Ralph Droms <[email-masked]>
Date: Mon, 09 May 2005 14:01:08 -0400

Ah, but the candidates know who they are, and can arrange their own
positive input.

If the list were open, might the nomcom receive more and better balanced
input?

- Ralph

---

From: Jari Arkko <[email-masked]>
Date: Mon, 09 May 2005 21:40:09 +0300

Hi Lakshminath,

Good point. Its possible that you would get (some) more input with
the new system. My guess is though that you'd still need to poll specific
groups to get the input, because people are typically not very
eager to do things unless you remind them. But its likely that
if you get very extreme candidates (particularly bad ones), you
might get a lot of input on that particular person.

The main result, I think, would be that you would get more balanced
input, and from a wider set of people.

Anyway, your description below tells another story as well.
We've been basically asking in this thread whether confidentiality
is important or not. Its important to realize that there is no
"nomcom only" confidentiality. What we have is a situation where
not only the nomcom, but a fairly large group of people in the
area know, and a many "insiders" (e.g., people who know a lot of
potential candidates) know. We might wonder how useful this
confidentiality is for the candidates who, for some reason, wish
to have confidentiality. Many key people that you'd be working
with know that you were running.

Please note that I'm not critizing your input collection system.
You definately need the input! But in reality, the confidentiality
may not be quite as tight as one might believe. Plus I at least
prefer the IETF to operate in an open, transparent manner.
And I want to all the participants to have the same capability to
provide input. Of course, its still the nomcom that is in charge of
the selections -- this leaves you still the possibility to decide for
yourselves, favor input from someone (e.g. outgoing AD) more
than Joe Random Neverbeentoietf. So I'd say we don't have a
problem with electioneering, nor does this proposal turn the
IETF to a voting organization.

--Jari

>
> In the current Nomcom, a few of us compiled lists of all WG 
> contributors (chairs, advisers, current I-D editors and authors) 
> within each area; and our Nomcom chair used a script to randomly 
> select a subset from those lists, and then used a 2-step process to 
> seek feedback.  The first was to ask each potential feedback provider 
> whether he/she would agree to keep the list of candidates 
> confidential, and the second to ask for feedback, with the option of 
> providing it anonymously.
>
> Sure the above process could be tweaked, but as it is does not result 
> in Nomcoms going "only to IETF management people" for feedback.  Does 
> it possibly exclude folks who are enthusiastic about providing 
> feedback?  Yes, but I think overall, it is quite fair.
>
> I do think sending the candidate lists to [email-masked] for feedback 
> has the downside potential of everyone commenting on a few of the 
> candidates or lists (i.e., areas).  That, if/when happens, is 
> practically useless for 2 reasons: Nomcom doesn't get feedback on all 
> lists, and a huge amount of feedback might be impossible to parse and 
> compile for humans :-).
>

---

From: Jari Arkko <[email-masked]>
Date: Mon, 09 May 2005 21:58:38 +0300

I tend to agree with Leslie that it would be better to update
the BCP. (I can volunteer to edit an update, if there are
no other takers.)

But I believe the update should simply allow the nomcom
to publish this information. As has been stated before,
a lot of this information is already around us, so many of
the potential downsides would already be a problem, if
they really would be problems. And given that we still
prefer the nomcom to be in charge, I do not think that
we will have a significant issue with electioneering. I
hope that the nomcom does more than counts positive
and negative inputs!

--Jari

Leslie Daigle wrote:

>>>  > >=> If we do that we may as well put the list on the web.  > How 
>>> do we define
>>>  > >"participant"?
>>> interested in  > providing feedback ask for a copy of the list, with 
>>> a promise of  > confidentiality, and give feedback - versus having 
>>> that information  > publicly available.  This sounds useful to me.
>>> nominees)
>>> I'm fine with that suggestion. Personally, I don't see the 
>>> difference between doing what you describe

---

From: Brian E Carpenter <[email-masked]>
Date: Tue, 10 May 2005 13:33:47 +0200

Jari,

> the BCP. (I can volunteer to edit an update, if there are

You may live to regret that statement :-)

> hope that the nomcom does more than counts positive

In fact, it's remarkably easy to ignore a stream of very
similar emails in praise of the same candidate. Of the arguments
against publishing the list, the electioneering threat is
the weakest, imho.

As Leslie noted, apart from the unknown effect on the number
of willing nominees, another tricky point is exactly when
the list is published and how nominations after that date
are handled.

    Brian

---

From: Jari Arkko <[email-masked]>
Date: Tue, 10 May 2005 15:11:57 +0300

Brian E Carpenter wrote:

>
> As Leslie noted (...) another tricky point is exactly when

Agreed. If you make the publication at the end of the
nominations period then its not useful as a tool for
other potential candidates to decide if they want (or
need!) to run for the position. But it seems complicated
to publish the list several times. And if we are open about
the list of candidates, we can't have nominations coming
in after the last publication of the list. Its a tricky decision,
but if it were up to me I'd probably just publish it once,
at the end of the nominations period.

--Jari

---

From: Brian E Carpenter <[email-masked]>
Date: Tue, 10 May 2005 16:41:44 +0200

> at the end of the nominations period.

Actually, I think there is a slightly better way, somehow analagous
to the 'petition period' used by the ISOC NomCom process.

On day N, publish the list of willing nominees so far and invite further
nominations before day N+14.

On day N+28, publish the final list of willing nominees and invite feedback.

This would, if we wanted to publish the names, give 2 weeks for extra
nominations and another 2 weeks to check their willingness to serve.

     Brian

---

From: Dave Crocker <[email-masked]>
Date: Tue, 10 May 2005 08:27:17 -0700

>  nominations and another 2 weeks to check their willingness to serve.

seems pretty reasonable.

  d/
  ---
  Dave Crocker

---

From: Jari Arkko <[email-masked]>
Date: Tue, 10 May 2005 23:20:16 +0300

> nominations and another 2 weeks to check their willingness to serve.

Ok. --Jari

---

From: "Spencer Dawkins" <[email-masked]>
Date: Tue, 10 May 2005 15:40:51 -0500

Brian,

This works for me, too. FWIW.

---

From: Danny McPherson <[email-masked]>
Date: Wed, 11 May 2005 13:31:17 -0600

> candidates can answer the question "would you have run if your name

Brian et al.,
Here are some data points for folks to consider.  Thanks to all
those (a surprisingly large amount in two days!) that replied to my
query.

-------------------------
Question asked to all 2004/05 IESG & IAB "willing nominees":

Would you have accepted nomination if the list of "willing
nominees" was made public:  YES or NO?

Response results:
---
IESG Nominees:
Total Responses: 83% of IESG Nominees
YES: 79.4%
NO: 20.6%
---
IAB Nominees:
Total Responses: 86.3% of IAB Nominees
YES: 86.4%
NO: 13.6%
-------------------------

I didn't include any additional comments several folks expressed, as
many of them have already been discussed here.  I'm certain that
if I posed slightly different variations of this question (for example,
"What if the list were padded w/ringers?" or the like) responses
would have been different.

One interesting (and perhaps rather intuitive) observation that's not
entirely obvious from the numbers above is that several folks were
OK with their names being listed as "willing nominees" for only a
subset of the positions which they'd been nominated (e.g., OK with
IAB nomination being public, but not IETF chair or IESG nomination
being public).

Given the time I've spent with the NomCom over the last year as
chair, (and my previous voting member term a couple years ago), I
can say for sure that making the lists public would certainly be
interesting and useful from the perspective of collecting feedback on
nominees from the community.  However, I also understand why many
folks are opposed to making the list of "willing nominees" public.

-danny