Subject: NomCom procedures revision

From: "Murray S. Kucherawy" <[email-masked]>
Date: Mon, 24 Aug 2015 21:01:08 -0700

Some months ago I started the work of editing a revision to the NomCom
procedures (RFC7437bis).  We made progress on some points, but seem to have
stalled on revising the requirements for qualifying to serve on NomCom.

The draft I have recently expired.  Is there any interest in taking another
run at this now?  Alternatively, is it worth publishing what we did
accomplish, and leaving that one point for a later attempt?

http://datatracker.ietf.org/doc/draft-kucherawy-rfc7437bis/

-MSK

---

From: "Joe Hildebrand" <[email-masked]>
Date: Tue, 25 Aug 2015 09:16:45 -0600

It's worth finishing the work.  What else did you think was left before 
doing a last call?

-- 
Joe Hildebrand

---

From: "Murray S. Kucherawy" <[email-masked]>
Date: Tue, 25 Aug 2015 16:39:52 -0700

Coming to consensus on revised NomCom qualification seemed to be the one
issue where there were lots of ideas but not much agreement.  The expired
draft captures one such idea but I wouldn't go so far as to claim it had
any kind of consensus at all.

The rest of the changes in there now didn't seem to be ruffling any
feathers.

---

From: Randy Bush <[email-masked]>
Date: Wed, 26 Aug 2015 09:36:29 +0900

> Coming to consensus on revised NomCom qualification seemed to be the
> one issue where there were lots of ideas but not much agreement.  The
> expired draft captures one such idea but I wouldn't go so far as to
> claim it had any kind of consensus at all.

then leave the rules we have today and we can separately discuss
changing it for at least two years.

maybe add a clause to the effect that those who post more than two
messages complicating or disagreeing are disqualified to serve.  :)

randy

---

From: Abdussalam Baryun <[email-masked]>
Date: Thu, 27 Aug 2015 17:21:38 +0200

Hi Murray,

Sorry that I maybe not following the points, may be they were on the list,
but the draft needs to have the points of changes. I think section 10 is
important, so I can know the changes to RFC7437, this section is already
known by the authors but I am not sure why still it is not drafted. For the
it is important so I can know the improvements to the procedure in abstract
(even the introduction refers to this section 10). Therefore, the draft is
not clear and I cannot decide, and it may take a lot of time of the readers
to understand without knowing the improvements/changes.

Thanks,

AB

On Tue, Aug 25, 2015 at 6:01 AM, Murray S. Kucherawy <[email-masked]>
wrote:

> The draft I have recently expired.  Is there any interest in taking
> another run at this now?  Alternatively, is it worth publishing what we did

---

From: "Murray S. Kucherawy" <[email-masked]>
Date: Thu, 27 Aug 2015 17:54:26 +0000

Have a look at Appendix F. I plan to fill out Section 10 once we know for
sure which changes have consensus rather than a few points that might still
be fluid.

-MSK

---

From: Harald Alvestrand <[email-masked]>
Date: Fri, 28 Aug 2015 13:13:46 +0200

Den 27. aug. 2015 19:54, skrev Murray S. Kucherawy:
> Have a look at Appendix F. I plan to fill out Section 10 once we know
> for sure which changes have consensus rather than a few points that
> might still be fluid.

Some notes (this is NOT a detailed review):

Having just gone through the exercise of establishing a voting mechanism
for my nomcom, I think the following needs to go:

5.5.  Voting Mechanism

   The Chair must establish a voting mechanism.  The mechanism by which
   this is accomplished is left to the discretion of the Chair, but must
   be accepted by at least 75% of the selecting volunteers before the
   work of the committee can begin.  Once established, this procedure
   cannot be altered until the current nominating committee is
   dissolved.

A) It turns out that voting mechanisms are *tricky* beasts. The idea
that a nomcom will make them 100% right on the first try is a Bad Idea.

I suggest changing this to "Once established, the minimum threshold for
changing the procedure is 75% of the selecting volunteers".

Note: The 75% acceptance criterion is new. 75% of the selecting
volunteers is 8 people. That means that 3 people can a) block the
acceptance of any procedure and b) (with my suggested change) prevent
any change to the procedure. We should make sure that's what we want.

B) A strict interpretation of "before the work can begin" would have the
members accept the voting mechanism before they start discussing the
voting mechanism. I don't think that is a good idea.)

I suggest "before the first vote on candidates is taken" (which is very
late, but at least it's an explicit point in time).

Also, is it an obvious consensus that the chair and the liaisons should
have no input into the decision to accept the voting mechanism?

5.6.  Voting Quorum

   At least a quorum of committee members must participate in a vote.

   Only selecting volunteers vote on a candidate selection.  For a
   candidate selection vote, a quorum is comprised of at least two
   thirds of the selecting volunteers.

   At all other times, a quorum is present if at least 75% of the
   nominating committee members are participating.

It is not at all clear what a "quorum" does. In our procedures work, we
found that separating out the idea of "meeting quorum" from "voting
quorum" made a lot of sense, espcially since we chose to do secret
ballots only - which means we can't do it in a meeting anyway, and there
was actually no requirement for the members of the quorum to be present
at the same time.

It also seemed unusual to have a meeting quorum without either the chair
or the prior year's chair; we put that into the procedures too.

Note that 4.15, 5.7 and 7.1 still uses "voting member" where it should
have "selecting member".

Apologies if this reiterates previous discussions; I must admit that I
seem to have skipped those debates when they happened.

Harald

---

From: Dave Crocker <[email-masked]>
Date: Fri, 28 Aug 2015 06:36:28 -0700

On 8/28/2015 4:13 AM, Harald Alvestrand wrote:
> Once established, this procedure

That assertion would seem to run contrary to the process rigidity you
are proposing above.

d/

-- 
Dave Crocker
Brandenburg InternetWorking
bbiw.net

---

From: Tony Hansen <[email-masked]>
Date: Fri, 28 Aug 2015 11:13:26 -0400

> changing the procedure is 75% of the selecting volunteers".

I agree completely that the decision on voting mechanism needs to be a
bit more flexible than "once and done". For example, there are some
voting mechanisms that can yield effective ties. If you don't decide on
how to deal with that up front, are you prevented from adding in a tie
breaker? Another example: it might be that you decide initially on an
overly complicated weighting algorithm, then figure out after using it
that a much simpler weighting algorithm would work just as well. Or you
discover some other facet that "just does not work", because when you
first chose the mechanism to begin with, you didn't have enough
experience to understand how the voting mechanism would be used.

> any change to the procedure. We should make sure that's what we want.

Do we need to be precisely 3/4? I'm pretty sure that a nomcom I was on a
few years ago used 2/3 majority of all voting members as the criteria.

> late, but at least it's an explicit point in time).

ack. There's lots more work that the nomcom must do instead of just
"voting on candidates". In particular, the voting mechanism seems like
it definitely does NOT need to be a first-order-of-business topic.

> have no input into the decision to accept the voting mechanism?

I would certainly expect that the chair and liaisons are there to
provide guidance on what they've seen has worked well and not well in
the past for many topics, including the voting mechanism.

> Note that 4.15, 5.7 and 7.1 still uses "voting member" where it should

There is also a need to be specific about "voting" vs "selecting a
candidate". There are many decisions that the nomcom might vote on
during the course of their business -- the same rules need not apply to
all cases.

With eballots, you can actually require a higher percentage to vote on a
candidate, not tied to any meeting.

I agree that a chair must be present to hold a meeting.

A general comment: I have a problem with all of these numbers being cast
in stone. I can see recommendations being put in with specific numbers,
but not fixing them. Also, I think 2/3 is a more realistic number than
3/4 for most of these values.

    Tony Hansen

---

From: Brian E Carpenter <[email-masked]>
Date: Sat, 29 Aug 2015 09:43:01 +1200

> accomplish, and leaving that one point for a later attempt?

Since you ask, I continue to feel that the 3/5 rule is restrictive for people
who have limited travel possibilities but have significant IETF experience.
Maybe we could have another week on that question, and then go with what we
have (with Harald's tweaks)?

So...

"  Members of the IETF community must have attended at least three of
   the last five IETF meetings in order to volunteer."

One quick fix is to change it to "three of the last six" which would
allow for a whole year of no travel and would not be hard to administer.
Another would be to add an alternative qualification "or five of the last
ten" to allow for longer-term regular participants. Either way, I think
that attending 50% of meetings should be enough.

   Brian

---

From: "Adrian Farrel" <[email-masked]>
Date: Fri, 28 Aug 2015 22:51:07 +0100

> That assertion would seem to run contrary to the process rigidity you

Indeed.
One would hope that a NomCom that discovers it is really unhappy with its voting mechanism can use exactly that voting mechanism to agree to make changes.

Adrian

---

From: Joel Halpern <[email-masked]>
Date: Fri, 28 Aug 2015 18:10:10 -0400

I was a bit confused by this discussion.  By 3777, the chair establishes 
the voting procedure.  By assumption, he establishes it before it is needed.

A sensible chair will establish procedures that the committee is 
comfortable with.  Since it is the chair who will administer whatever 
proecedures are used, it eh committee does not trust the chair to 
establsih them, why would the committee trust the chair to adminsiter them?

I would hate to have an overly strict rule on voting procedures, and a 
couple of nomcom members get into a typical IETF dispute about the best 
answer, and thereby hang the work of the nomcom.

Why is this being made more complex, with strict priority, strict rules 
on adoption, etc?

Yours,
Joel

---

From: Mary Barnes <[email-masked]>
Date: Fri, 28 Aug 2015 17:17:07 -0500

I have the exact same question and concern with regards to being overly
prescriptive.    Was this proposal intended to solve a problem experienced
by a past Nomcom?

Regards,
Mary.

On Fri, Aug 28, 2015 at 5:10 PM, Joel Halpern <[email-masked]> wrote:

> proecedures are used, it eh committee does not trust the chair to establsih
> them, why would the committee trust the chair to adminsiter them?
>
> Why is this being made more complex, with strict priority, strict rules on
> adoption, etc?
>
> Yours,
> Joel
>
>
>> One would hope that a NomCom that discovers it is really unhappy with its
>> voting mechanism can use exactly that voting mechanism to agree to make
>> changes.
>>
>> Adrian
>>
>>
>>
>

---

From: Loa Andersson <[email-masked]>
Date: Sat, 29 Aug 2015 10:46:04 +0200

Brian,

> that attending 50% of meetings should be enough.

I don't have a real problem with "3 out of 6" or "5 out of 10" or even 
50% of our meetings, but I at least one of those 3, 5 or 50% needs to
be recent (let us say 1 or the last two, and 3 out of 6.

What I'm saying is that, and yes it is an extreme case, someone that
attended the first 48 meetings would not be qualified when we establish
the next NomCom after IETF 96. Nor would someone attending 5 meetings
and then did not attend for almost 2 years be qualified.

/Loa

---

From: John C Klensin <[email-masked]>
Date: Sat, 29 Aug 2015 09:52:11 -0400

--On Friday, August 28, 2015 18:10 -0400 Joel Halpern
<[email-masked]> wrote:

> I was a bit confused by this discussion.  By 3777, the chair
> establishes the voting procedure.  By assumption, he
> establishes it before it is needed.
> 
> A sensible chair will establish procedures that the committee
> is comfortable with.  Since it is the chair who will
> administer whatever proecedures are used, it eh committee does
> not trust the chair to establsih them, why would the committee
> trust the chair to adminsiter them?
> 
> I would hate to have an overly strict rule on voting
> procedures, and a couple of nomcom members get into a typical
> IETF dispute about the best answer, and thereby hang the work
> of the nomcom.
> 
> Why is this being made more complex, with strict priority,
> strict rules on adoption, etc?

I agree with Joel and would like to, once again, suggest that
the IETF seems to have developed a tendency toward solving
problems that are extremely uncommon or don't exist at all
(perhaps "because we can") and doing so by developing complex
and prescriptive rules.  We almost never get those rules right,
often because Murphy's Law predicts that the next time some set
of rules is really needed will be due to some case, or involve
some issue, that the rules didn't exactly predict. 

Instead, let's assume that the leaders, chairs, etc., whom we
appoint are competent and responsible adults who will exercise
reasonable discretion and make decisions in the best interests
of the IETF when that counts.  If that assumption turns out to
be incorrect, let's try to fix that, rather than seeing if we
can transform broad discretion into robot-like rule-driven
behavior.

So, for me, the right "rule" is "let the Chair decide".  If we
have to concentrate on cases where that might go wrong,
concentrate on whether the mechanisms for the voting (sic)
members of the Nomcom can overrule or remove the Chair, not on
making the procedures rigid or trying to specify what happens in
rare cases.

FWIW, I have something of the same reaction toward qualification
formulae.  Every time we allow an interim meeting and allow it
to behave exactly as a f2f one does, including making decisions
that will supposedly be ratified on the mailing list; every time
we replace rough consensus and discretion with rigid decision
rules; and perhaps even every time a Nomcom concludes that it
needs to develop and use complex questionnaires for which,
inevitably, responses are at least partially a function of how
much the candidate (or her company) wants the job, rather than
relying on Nomcom member knowledge of the community and who
might make the best candidate, we move away from really being
able to justify the assumption that attending a bunch of
meetings is the only reasonable qualification for serving on the
Nomcom --no matter how those meetings are counted.  As some who,
like Brian, is doing a significant percentage of meetings
remotely but who has enough background and ongoing involvement
with the IETF that I think I have at least as much perspective
as a relative newcomer who has attended a year's worth of
meetings but never written an I-D, chaired a WG, or really
contributed to a discussion, I'm coming to the conclusion that
it is at least as important to have active participants with
recent remote participation experience on the Nomcom (and
probably on the IESG) as it is to have participants with recent
meeting experience.  The kind of adjustments Brian and others
have suggested may help, but I think the real issue is that we
need not just to allow for fewer recent f2f meetings but to
consider remote participation experience a real asset (while,
ideally, pushing back on Nomcom membership by what Marshall Rose
referred to a Go-ers, rather than Do-ers, no matter how many f2f
(or remote) meetings they attend.

best,
    john

---

From: Brian E Carpenter <[email-masked]>
Date: Sun, 30 Aug 2015 08:21:22 +1200

On 29/08/2015 20:46, Loa Andersson wrote:
> I don't have a real problem with "3 out of 6" or "5 out of 10" or even 50% of our meetings, but I at least one of those 3, 5 or
> 50% needs to

On another sub-thread, John Klensin said:

> The kind of adjustments Brian and others

I'm sympathetic to both your points, but I'm also keen to keep the
rule as simple as possible, for various reasons (especially
simplicity in verification).

One way out is to decouple this question from RFC7437bis by designing
an RFC3933 Process Experiment (i.e. try out an alternative qualification
rule for a couple of years, reverting to the current rule afterwards
by default).

    Brian

---

From: Lixia Zhang <[email-masked]>
Date: Sat, 29 Aug 2015 14:53:06 -0700

> On Aug 29, 2015, at 1:21 PM, Brian E Carpenter <[email-masked]> wrote:
> 

if we are willing to try some experiments, I would like to suggest that we extend the required period of the nomcom candidate's involvement with IETF process.
e.g. if we do "3 out of the last 6", this qualifies someone who has only got involved over the last 2 years.  My own observation, which can be biased to say the least, suggests that a longer experience with IETF could bring benefit  to nomcom outcome.

My suggestion is to try a longer period, but I dont know how much longer it needs to be.  As experiment, how about attending 4 out of the last 10 IETF?

Lixia

---

From: John C Klensin <[email-masked]>
Date: Sat, 29 Aug 2015 19:05:40 -0400

--On Sunday, August 30, 2015 08:21 +1200 Brian E Carpenter
<[email-masked]> wrote:

>...
> I'm sympathetic to both your points, but I'm also keen to keep
> the rule as simple as possible, for various reasons (especially
> One way out is to decouple this question from RFC7437bis by
> designing an RFC3933 Process Experiment (i.e. try out an
> alternative qualification rule for a couple of years,
> reverting to the current rule afterwards by default).

This may be too radical but, in the spirit of allowing people to
apply discretion, let me success such a process experiment based
on the principle that the reason for Nomcom-volunteer
qualification rules is to be sure that the selecting members of
the Nomcom have a reasonable understanding of the IETF and how
it works.   For the purpose of this experiment, 

(1) Anyone meeting the current requirements is automatically
qualified to volunteer, just as they are today.

(2) Anyone inclined to serve on the Nomcom and willing to meet
whatever requirements for attendance and participation during
the Nomcom's term apply for the Nomcom of interest may submit
his or her name and a very brief statement of qualifications
(or, more specifically, why they believe they are qualified) to
the Nomcom Chair.   The Chair and previous Chair will consider
all such applications and may, based on their personal
discretion and the "reasonable understanding" principle may be
added to the volunteer pool.  When the Chair publishes the list
of volunteers, those who submitted a statement of qualifications
will be included along with their statements and the decision of
the Chair and prior Chair.  Egregiously silly decisions may be
objected to following the usual procedures.

That experimental model has three important properties: it
involves no new filtering rules, it may allow some people onto
the Nomcom whom everyone would agree have an adequate knowledge
of the IETF but who do not qualify on meeting counts alone, and
it allows us to accumulate information about who actually
volunteers and asks for an exception and what their claimed
qualifications are.  Put differently, it may help us tell
whether we have an actual problem or only a theoretical one.

   john

---

From: Harald Alvestrand <[email-masked]>
Date: Sun, 30 Aug 2015 11:36:18 +0200

> whether we have an actual problem or only a theoretical one.

FWIW... the last nomcom selection process had 183 qualified volunteers.

A further 14 volunteered, confirmed their volunteering, and were found
not to be qualified (I believe some were conflicted, but I think most
lost on the attendance count).

A further 120 ticked the nomcom box on an attendance form, were found to
be unqualified, and did not respond to the confirmation query. I'm
wondering about those.

I'd assume the 14 (minus the conflicts) were people who might consider
sending in an application as suggested.
So that's a minimum number - if the "application" path were known, we'd
expect more.

Harald

---

From: Brian E Carpenter <[email-masked]>
Date: Mon, 31 Aug 2015 09:20:46 +1200

> whether we have an actual problem or only a theoretical one.

I decided to sleep on it, and the result is that I'm quite attracted
by this idea. Maybe we should have three "gatekeepers" instead of
two, but since the random selection process makes the final cut,
it doesn't seem that personal bias could be a major factor anyway.

We could add a list of *suggested* criteria such as RFC authorship,
active WG contributions, remote participation.

    Brian

---

From: John C Klensin <[email-masked]>
Date: Sun, 30 Aug 2015 17:37:20 -0400

--On Monday, August 31, 2015 09:20 +1200 Brian E Carpenter
<[email-masked]> wrote:

>> This may be too radical but, in the spirit of allowing people
>> to apply discretion, let me success such a process experiment
>> based on the principle that the reason for Nomcom-volunteer
>> qualification rules is to be sure that the selecting members
>> of the Nomcom have a reasonable understanding of the IETF and
>> how it works.   For the purpose of this experiment, 
>> 
>> (or, more specifically, why they believe they are qualified)
>> to the Nomcom Chair.   The Chair and previous Chair will
>> consider all such applications and may, based on their
>> personal discretion and the "reasonable understanding"
>> principle may be added to the volunteer pool.  When the Chair
>> publishes the list of volunteers, those who submitted a
>> statement of qualifications will be included along with their
>> statements and the decision of the Chair and prior Chair.
>> Egregiously silly decisions may be objected to following the
>> usual procedures.
>> 
>> the Nomcom whom everyone would agree have an adequate
>> knowledge of the IETF but who do not qualify on meeting
>> counts alone, and it allows us to accumulate information
>> about who actually volunteers and asks for an exception and
>> what their claimed qualifications are.  Put differently, it
>> may help us tell whether we have an actual problem or only a
>> theoretical one.
> 
> I decided to sleep on it, and the result is that I'm quite
> attracted by this idea. Maybe we should have three
> "gatekeepers" instead of two, but since the random selection
> process makes the final cut, it doesn't seem that personal
> bias could be a major factor anyway.

Largely because of the randomization, I'm not even sure we need
more than one, but Harald's numbers suggest that there might be
some advantages in either load-sharing or not dumping this on
the sitting Ncmcom Chair.  The main reason I suggested two was
to give the sitting Chair flexibility if deciding about an
applicant was uncomfortable because of, e.g., a work
relationship.  

> We could add a list of *suggested* criteria such as RFC
> authorship, active WG contributions, remote participation.

Yes, but I'd see those as recommendations to the applicant
(would-be volunteer) to include in a request rather than as
recommendations to those making the decision about what to
consider.  If there were less than complete consistency in
evaluations during the experimental period, that might actually
be an advantage.

    john

---

From: Brian E Carpenter <[email-masked]>
Date: Tue, 1 Sep 2015 16:07:36 +1200

> applicant was uncomfortable because of, e.g., a work

Yes, fair comment. Maybe even say "any previous Chair" rather than
"the previous Chair" to give added flexibility in avoiding
conflict of interest.

> evaluations during the experimental period, that might actually

Agreed. We shouldn't overthink the experiment itself.

   Brian

---

From: "Murray S. Kucherawy" <[email-masked]>
Date: Mon, 31 Aug 2015 21:26:53 -0700

On Sat, Aug 29, 2015 at 4:05 PM, John C Klensin <[email-masked]> wrote:

> [...]

For my own clarification, would we publish the current draft without
changing the qualification criteria, and then either revise and republish
or do an "Updates" draft after the process experiment?  Or would we run the
experiment and hold the draft until the experiment is done?

-MSK

---

From: Brian E Carpenter <[email-masked]>
Date: Tue, 1 Sep 2015 17:29:40 +1200

> experiment and hold the draft until the experiment is done?

My suggestion was the first one: publish what you have now, then try
the experiment. Experiments can fail.

   Brian

---

From: Melinda Shore <[email-masked]>
Date: Mon, 31 Aug 2015 21:55:15 -0800

> the experiment. Experiments can fail.

I think this is a terrific suggestion.  It seems to me to
be a reasonable way to try to build a better nomcom, but
I think it's also potentially got something interesting to
teach us about overall IETF process and whether or not we
can relax some of our more rigid processes at our current
scale.  I'd like to see us give this a try.

Melinda