Subject: Re: I-D Action: draft-rsalz-termlimits-00.txt

From: Brian E Carpenter <[email-masked]>
Date: Thu, 21 Oct 2021 08:32:58 +1300

Well, this is a bad idea that was repeatedly rejected in the past.

Why? Because it's always hard to fill all the positions, and this would make it harder.

If someone is incompetent, NomCom will not reappoint them even once, let alone twice.

We all agree that ossification is unwelcome, but artificial turnover is not the way to avoid that.

Regards
   Brian Carpenter

On 21-Oct-21 03:34, [email-masked] wrote:
> 
> A New Internet-Draft is available from the on-line Internet-Drafts directories.
> 
> 
>         Title           : Term limits for IETF Leadership Positions
>         Author          : Rich Salz
> 	Filename        : draft-rsalz-termlimits-00.txt
> 	Pages           : 3
> 	Date            : 2021-10-20
> 
> Abstract:
>    This document says that nobody can be picked by NomCom for a position
>    more than two consecutive terms.
> 
>    It obsoletes some other documents, which ones are TBD.
> 
> Discussion Venues
> 
>    This note is to be removed before publishing as an RFC.
> 
>    Source for this draft and an issue tracker can be found at
>    https://github.com/richsalz/draft-rsalz-termlimits.
> 
> 
> The IETF datatracker status page for this draft is:
> https://datatracker.ietf.org/doc/draft-rsalz-termlimits/
> 
> There is also an HTML version available at:
> https://www.ietf.org/archive/id/draft-rsalz-termlimits-00.html
> 
> 
> Internet-Drafts are also available by anonymous FTP at:
> ftp://ftp.ietf.org/internet-drafts/
> 
> 
> _______________________________________________
> I-D-Announce mailing list
> [email-masked]
> https://www.ietf.org/mailman/listinfo/i-d-announce
> Internet-Draft directories: http://www.ietf.org/shadow.html
> or ftp://ftp.ietf.org/ietf/1shadow-sites.txt
>

---

From: John C Klensin <[email-masked]>
Date: Wed, 20 Oct 2021 16:29:02 -0400

> Well, this is a bad idea that was repeatedly rejected in the

Brian, I believe that hard limits were rejected in the past for
two reasons:

(i) There will certainly be specific cases for which they are
the wrong answer.  We can imagine many such cases.

(ii) There has been at least a suspicion in the community that
the IESG is opposed to anything that would put additional
constraints on incumbents (e.g., themselves).

> this would make it harder.

I suggest there is a different way to look at that.  If we have
a position that cannot be filled by someone able, willing,
competent, and with adequate time and resources, a Nomcom would
be doing the community a big favor by not filling it and thereby
forcing a review of whether we need that position, whether the
role that position is supposed to satisfy is correctly defined
for needs at the time or whether some reorganization would serve
us better, whether our ambitions for what should be done are
realistic, and so on.  Probably the same principle should apply
when there is only one candidate whom the Nomcom (or other
appointing body) would not consider acceptable if there were any
other choices.

As a specific example that has come up before, if there is an
area with two ADs and one of those slots cannot be filled, it
should trigger a review of whether that area can get by on one
AD, whether we need the Area at all any more (so that the remain
AD should be charged with winding it down), whether some of the
WGs in the Area should be trimmed, and whether the IESG is in
need of a reorganization.  

Moving forward with a least-bad candidate because it was hard to
recruit people may help patch a problem but I suggest it is bad
for the IETF in the long term.

And that suggests there is actually value in term limits:  if we
know, a year in advance, that a position will be open, it allows
far more time to think about candidates, twist arms, line up
resources, etc.,  and even whether some of the above thinking
about the organization or the Area or the IETF would be in
order.  in addition, telling organizations who support
Nomcom-selected people during their terms that it for a maximum
of two such terms might make it easier to get agreement than if
it is a potential lifetime commitment (assuming, of course, that
organizations are not supporting people for those positions
because of a belief that having people in them brings prestige,
credibility, or power to the company).

> turnover is not the way to avoid that.

I think we have seen people who have ossified in place but who
are then selected for an additional term before retiring or
being forced out.  I agree that rigid term limits are not the
right solution, but hoping the Nomcom will figure it out may not
be the optimal solution either.

Finally, the "one term out" rule in Rich's proposal ensures
rotation, not retirement, and there is a difference.  Even a
person who has done a great job might benefit from some time in
the community between terms... and the community would almost
certainly benefit from the more recent and closer to bottom-up
perspective on what it takes to get work done in the IETF.

   best,
    john

---

From: Brian E Carpenter <[email-masked]>
Date: Thu, 21 Oct 2021 09:34:48 +1300

Well, I am not convinced. *Guidance* to NomCom along these lines
would be a fine idea, but a firm rule, IMHO, would over-constrain
an already constrained solution.

Regards
   Brian

---

From: "Adrian Farrel" <[email-masked]>
Date: Wed, 20 Oct 2021 21:43:58 +0100

> *Guidance* to NomCom along these lines would be a fine idea

If only we had some way of telling NomCom how we feel about candidates and appointments.

Adrian

---

From: "Salz, Rich" <[email-masked]>
Date: Wed, 20 Oct 2021 20:54:47 +0000

>    Well, this is a bad idea that was repeatedly rejected in the past.

Do you have links to the archivers, or perhaps years?

>    We all agree that ossification is unwelcome, but artificial turnover is not the way to avoid that.

Don 't think of it as artificial turnover, think of it as forced newcomer entry if that goes down easier.

---

From: John C Klensin <[email-masked]>
Date: Wed, 20 Oct 2021 16:58:32 -0400

--On Thursday, October 21, 2021 09:34 +1300 Brian E Carpenter
<[email-masked]> wrote:

> Well, I am not convinced. *Guidance* to NomCom along these
> lines would be a fine idea, but a firm rule, IMHO, would
> over-constrain an already constrained solution.

To be clear, while I am trying to see the other side of the
argument and want to try to avoid ones I consider largely
spurious or even dangerous (such as "positions are too hard to
fill"), I share your concern about a firm rule.

As suggested earlier, have a look at draft-klensin-nomcom-term,
which is all about guidance and treating separate issues
separately.  Whether the two-step process it proposes would
really clarify things, eliminate another problem people have
expressed concern about (recently, not 15+ years ago), and be
worth the effort is, I think, a separate discussion.

I need to consult with Spencer before putting a new version up,
but you can probably assume it is in the pipe.

    john

---

From: Jared Mauch <[email-masked]>
Date: Wed, 20 Oct 2021 18:10:18 -0400

I must agree with this. We have seen the impacts of this in my state. They were enacted likely with similar well intentions - the outcome is people cycling through so fast the incentives change. (At least in our statewide politics).  

- Jared 

https://crcmich.org/press-releases/twenty-five-years-later-term-limits-have-failed-to-deliver-on-their-promise-but-theyre-probably-here-to-stay

Sent via RFC1925 complaint device

> On Oct 20, 2021, at 4:36 PM, Brian E Carpenter <[email-masked]> wrote:
>

---

From: "John Levine" <[email-masked]>
Date: 20 Oct 2021 20:54:25 -0400

>Don 't think of it as artificial turnover, think of it as forced newcomer entry if that goes down easier.

It sure seems like "we don't believe nomcoms will pick the right people so we are inventing more rules."

I agree with Barry that a convention not to appoint someone for more than N years is fine, but if we
then think we need a stick to force nomcoms to do that, we have problems that term limits won't solve.

R's,
John

PS: there is also the outlier IETF Trust, where we have specifically asked for people to stay on for
a long time because the institutional memory is so important.  I am the longest serving current trustee
and it is often useful to be able to tell the other trustees why did we do this or why didn't we do that.

---

From: Keith Moore <[email-masked]>
Date: Thu, 21 Oct 2021 00:21:13 -0400

> then think we need a stick to force nomcoms to do that, we have problems that term limits won't solve.

On balance, I think this is right.   Also, I have seen some ADs that I 
thought served too long, but I don't see a correlation between the 
quality of past ADs and either the length of their terms or the number 
of "gap years".

If we think we need more churn in ADs, the solution is some combination 
of finding/grooming more good candidates and making it easier for people 
to serve, so that the nomcom has better candidates to choose from.   I'm 
pretty sure the solution is NOT to paint the nomcom into a corner - they 
have plenty of constraints already.

Keith

---

From: Carsten Bormann <[email-masked]>
Date: Thu, 21 Oct 2021 08:01:35 +0200

+1 (to both JohnL and Keith).

Grüße, Carsten

> On 21. Oct 2021, at 06:21, Keith Moore <[email-masked]> wrote:
> 
> On balance, I think this is right.   Also, I have seen some ADs that I thought served too long, but I don't see a correlation between the quality of past ADs and either the length of their terms or the number of "gap years".
> 
> If we think we need more churn in ADs, the solution is some combination of finding/grooming more good candidates and making it easier for people to serve, so that the nomcom has better candidates to choose from.   I'm pretty sure the solution is NOT to paint the nomcom into a corner - they have plenty of constraints already.
> 
> Keith
> 
>

---

From: Vasilenko Eduard <[email-masked]>
Date: Thu, 21 Oct 2021 08:47:52 +0000

I do not believe that it is right: "they are ineligible to directly serve for another term in any NomCom-chosen position".
"Any" is too strong filtering.
The right one should be: "After a person has served two consecutive terms in *particular* NomCom-chosen position, they are ineligible to directly serve for another term in *this* position; there must be a gap of at least one year. "

Humans are capable to establish social connections then leveraging them for personal goals.
It is human nature - nothing could be done about it. Connections should be cut periodically.
IETF is to serve the public good, ideally anonymously. Our beneficiary is anonymous, right? He/she is somewhere.
I know that many people would come and say that personal connections could help to solve problems,
But it has more good than bad only inside a corporate environment where common goals should exist.
IETF now is mostly the battlefield between persons and sometimes companies for egoistic goals.
Cutting some personal connections could improve IETF culture a little.
Because if not change people for years then sooner or later the question would come for the inheritance of the position.

The "bronze statue" in power is not the ideal boss in such a controversial environment.
These all are very similar to the boss in any position for the big country. They have 2 term restrictions in many cases.
Countries where they do not have (or do not obey) such restrictions we call ...
Ed/
-----Original Message-----
From: ietf [mailto:[email-masked]] On Behalf Of Brian E Carpenter
Sent: Wednesday, October 20, 2021 10:33 PM
To: IETF discussion list <[email-masked]>
Subject: Re: I-D Action: draft-rsalz-termlimits-00.txt

Regards
   Brian Carpenter

On 21-Oct-21 03:34, [email-masked] wrote:
> Internet-Draft directories: http://www.ietf.org/shadow.html or 
> ftp://ftp.ietf.org/ietf/1shadow-sites.txt
>

---

From: Jared Mauch <[email-masked]>
Date: Thu, 21 Oct 2021 06:42:39 -0400

> On Oct 20, 2021, at 8:54 PM, John Levine <[email-masked]> wrote:
> 

There is a variant of this that plays out in the IAB, some things don’t happen very often and when they do, knowing what and why behind things is important to avoid pitfalls from the past.

- jared

---

From: "Joel M. Halpern" <[email-masked]>
Date: Thu, 21 Oct 2021 09:36:41 -0400

I fully agree with Keith on this.

Yours,
Joel

---

From: "Salz, Rich" <[email-masked]>
Date: Thu, 21 Oct 2021 13:44:22 +0000

>> people so we are inventing more rules."

No.

My intent was to encourage *the overall IETF community* that it is worth trying to get into IETF leadership more often.  NomCom can't appoint someone who isn't nominated. I am trying to get a bigger pool of nominees. In my opinion, one of the most tractable ways of doing this is to break the "once a leader always a leader" view that, in my experience, discourages new people from trying.

---

From: "Joel M. Halpern" <[email-masked]>
Date: Thu, 21 Oct 2021 09:50:12 -0400

I would love to see more nominees.  (I would like even more to see more 
skilled, capable, nominees).

Making rules that cause serious problems if the community does nto 
suddenly provide something that it has failed to provide when pushed in 
the past seems a recipe for problems.  We have, multiple times, had 
problems of insufficient nominees.   It has caused problems.
Can we please not make it worse.

Yours,
Joel

---

From: "Salz, Rich" <[email-masked]>
Date: Thu, 21 Oct 2021 13:51:31 +0000

suddenly provide something that it has failed to provide when pushed in 
    the past seems a recipe for problems

Maybe.  We don't know.  We haven't tried.

What's your proposed solution?

---

From: "Joel M. Halpern" <[email-masked]>
Date: Thu, 21 Oct 2021 10:29:56 -0400

This seems badly asked as you wrote it.
What you have proposed seems likely to me to make a difficult situation 
worse.  That seems a good reason not to do it.

Trying to come up with cultural means to better encourage good 
candidates is something I would be happy to brainstorm on.  I know that 
many ADs have already taken steps, like encouraging folks to run against 
them, to help with this.
I know that many WG chairs have taken steps like having WG members serve 
as document shepherds to try to boost the pool of people with suitable 
experience to be WG chairs and ADs.
I know that most nomcoms already have a bias for IESG and IAB to be 
questioning of folks running for third terms, and very skeptical of 
folks running for fourth terms.   Which matches what I understand the 
community wants.

Most of the proposals to reduce work load for IESG members have seemed 
to me likely to cause more problems than they solve.  I do grant that 
work load is part of the dis-incentive for folks running for the IESG.

So no, I do not have good answers.  But strict rules seem the wrong answer.

Yours,
Joel

---

From: Michael Richardson <[email-masked]>
Date: Thu, 21 Oct 2021 10:45:46 -0400

On 10/21/2021 9:44 AM, Salz, Rich wrote:
    > My intent was to encourage *the overall IETF community* that it is
    > worth trying to get into IETF leadership more often.  NomCom can't
    > appoint someone who isn't nominated. I am trying to get a bigger pool
    > of nominees. In my opinion, one of the most tractable ways of doing
    > this is to break the "once a leader always a leader" view that, in my
    > experience, discourages new people from trying.

Without term limits a question that many nomcoms have asked many nominees
(even before they are appointed the first time...) has been about succession
planning.

Something like:
          "How will you develop the personnel within the area so that
          there will be people able to take over from you?"

An advantage that term limits brings is that it makes it very very clear that
they can't go on forever.   It is perhaps more of a forcing function.

I really dislike ADs going on to the IAB after they have served multiple
terms as an AD.   The individual people who have done this have almost always
been amazing: because they were amazing people.  I am more concerned about
that "term limit" than any other myself.

I'd really like them to take six months off. (And that's all it is: one
retires in March, and by end of August, you have to present yourself as an
IAB nominee)

I'm less concerned about moving someone from IAB->IESG, btw.

I also want more nominees.  To get that, we need to look lower in the
management funnel: we need to look at getting more WG secretaries trained,
who can become WG chairs, who can then step up.

We also need to collect more feedback from AD-sponsoring companies about how
to make this easier from an HR point of view.   I think it is reasonable for
the companies to be clear to themselves and to us what their return on
investment is.  I've observed a number of companies where retiring ADs left.
The company got nothing out of their investment.

--
Michael Richardson <[email-masked]>   . o O ( IPv6 IøT consulting )
           Sandelman Software Works Inc, Ottawa and Worldwide

---

From: tom petch <[email-masked]>
Date: Thu, 21 Oct 2021 17:23:14 +0100

> If only we had some way of telling NomCom how we feel about candidates and appointments.

Mmmm as I have just received an e-mail on a public IETF list inviting me 
to tell NomCom how I feel about candidates, I am puzzled by this 
statement.  If it were ironic or a joke, I would expect to see one of 
those emoti thingies around that statement but I cannot see one which 
makes me think that the statement is intended to be taken seriously.

Mmmm ... I am puzzled.

> .

---

From: Michael StJohns <[email-masked]>
Date: Thu, 21 Oct 2021 13:29:59 -0400

On 10/21/2021 12:23 PM, tom petch wrote:
> Mmmm as I have just received an e-mail on a public IETF list inviting 
> me to tell NomCom how I feel about candidates, I am puzzled by this 
IF you can't parse good understated British humor - what good are you?

Seriously, emojis are somewhat overdone and Adrian's comment was pretty 
much an in-joke for anyone who has ever a) been a nomcom member, b) been 
a candidate, c) been in any leadership position of the IETF, d) been 
around for 3 years or more, e) suffered through similar discussions on 
this list multiple times.   E.g. pretty much everyone.

Amused - Mike

---

From: Barry Leiba <[email-masked]>
Date: Thu, 21 Oct 2021 13:43:02 -0400

> to serve, so that the nomcom has better candidates to choose from.

I think this is a really key point: I would rather see us put the
effort into figuring out how to scale the AD job so that more good
people are willing and able to do it.  I think that's critical to the
IETF's long-term viability.

Barry

---

From: Keith Moore <[email-masked]>
Date: Thu, 21 Oct 2021 13:57:38 -0400

> IETF's long-term viability.

We have this problem in the IETF that we're really not very good at 
saying "no" to taking on new work of dubious value, and we're even worse 
at saying "no" to a working group that wants to extend its charter past 
its original work items and/or timeframe.

There's a related problem in that the entire IESG is essentially the 
review panel for every IETF Consensus action and for many more decisions 
also.   Even though IESG has streamlined these discussions considerably 
over the years, in some sense, every new AD increases the complexity of 
making decisions.

But from where I sit, the biggest problem is that we have too many WGs, 
and too many that exist for too long.   We need to focus on what's of 
core importance for the Internet, and also try to actually do more 
relevant work than we have been doing.

Keith

---

From: "John Levine" <[email-masked]>
Date: 21 Oct 2021 14:18:22 -0400

>What's your proposed solution?

I can't help but be reminded of a recent story of a legislator, who upon
hearing that there were week-long queues of ships waiting to unload at
Los Angeles, offered to fix it by making it illegal for ships to wait
for more than three days.

Like everyone else, I would like to get more people into IETF leadership,
but for all the reasons already described I think this is more likely to
backfire than to help.

We know plenty of reasons that people are reluctant to volunteer for AD and
IAB.  Let's see if we can think of ways to address those reasons directly.

R's,
John

---

From: Brian E Carpenter <[email-masked]>
Date: Fri, 22 Oct 2021 10:07:20 +1300

> IETF's long-term viability.

This. And responding to another point that Keith made, *why* have there
been approximately 120 active WGs for more than the past ten years? Why
that number, rather than (say) 50 or 250?

Why do we publish about 300 RFCs per year, rather than (say) 100 or 500?
(There seems to be a slight downward trend in that number, but that's
the 20-year average. The average since 1969 is about 170 per year.)

Are these natural constants or what? How many IETF WGs and RFCs does
the Internet really need?

I think we need to understand our own dynamics better before trying to
fix them.

   Brian

---

From: Keith Moore <[email-masked]>
Date: Thu, 21 Oct 2021 18:05:27 -0400

> Why do we publish about 300 RFCs per year, rather than (say) 100 or 500?

Is the relevance of a typical IETF RFC going up or down?  (I suspect the 
latter, but I'd love to have a reason to believe we're getting more 
relevant over time)

My impression is that the amount of work and time to produce an RFC 
stays about the same over time, or maybe increases.   If the relevance 
of a typical RFC is decreasing, we may be wasting a lot of effort.

Keith

---

From: tom petch <[email-masked]>
Date: Fri, 22 Oct 2021 10:23:19 +0100

> IETF's long-term viability.

My hobby horse is to reduce the work that ADs have to do and my sense is 
that this is going up because I-Ds are arriving in a less than adequate 
state.  I find it hard to judge because it used to be that the e-mails 
for IESG review did not appear on the WG list but one metric would be 
how many e-mail are generated at that time.  A recent I-D generated 51 
e-mail on the WG list as part of IESG review, after a significant number 
of e-mail on Last Call.  For me this says we are asking the IESG to do 
too much and so making it harder to find AD.

The first step to solvng a problem is defining the problem:-)

Tom Petch

---

From: "Salz, Rich" <[email-masked]>
Date: Fri, 22 Oct 2021 13:37:05 +0000

>   Is the relevance of a typical IETF RFC going up or down?

How do you tell?  Can you measure it, other than have opinions?

---

From: Keith Moore <[email-masked]>
Date: Fri, 22 Oct 2021 10:01:56 -0400

> How do you tell?  Can you measure it, other than have opinions?

I don't know how to measure it.  (Also, I think there's a general 
problem in society these days which is that we pay more attention to 
things that are easily measured, than to things that aren't, even when 
the things that are easily measured are less important.)

I do however suggest (for example) that work that has significant 
potential benefit for a broad portion of the Internet user community, is 
more deserving of IETF attention than work that has less significant 
benefit, or which benefits a narrow portion of the user community.

I also wonder (again for example) to what extent it's worth a multi-year 
effort to make detailed minor revisions to old specifications of old 
protocols is worth IETF's attention, or whether there's a point of 
diminishing returns, after which trying to rewrite old documents creates 
more ambiguities or interoperability problems than it solves.   I wonder 
if we could find a better way to update old documents than to publish 
new RFCs to replace them, with the dual goals of taking less work to get 
to completion and also encouraging changes to mature specifications only 
where and when they are necessary.

I don't like quotas.   But what would happen if we set a goal of 
producing fewer technical RFCs every year, of more average relevance 
than the average technical RFC of the previous year?

Keith

---

From: Christian Huitema <[email-masked]>
Date: Fri, 22 Oct 2021 09:54:18 -0700

> the things that are easily measured are less important.)

I did try to estimate that, see RFC 8963. I tried various metrics, 
including citation counts, deployment of the technology, and web 
references. The very high level summary is that there are considerable 
differences between RFCs. The majority of the RFCs that I sampled is 
cited a couple of times if at all, deployed moderately, and hardly 
referenced outside of RFC indices and repertories. The highly popular 
ones are cited a lot, deployed a lot, and referenced a lot.

Comparisons between time periods are difficult, because any document is 
likely to accrue more citations and references over time. When 
compensating for that, there were no huge differences between the median 
of samples of RFC from 2018, 2008 and 1998 -- largely because the median 
RFC is not read very much. In my samples, the value of the IETF appears 
to come from a very small number of big hitters, such as for example RFC 
8446 (TLS 1.3) in 2018, or RFC 2267 (Network Ingress Filtering) in 1998. 
There are probably a few big hitters like that every year, someone may 
want to do the study.

There was a huge difference in another metric, the time from initial 
draft to published RFC. Back in 1998, the median delay was one year. It 
was already more than 3 years in 2008, and still is. Much of the delays 
happen in the working group, from initial draft to last call.

-- Christian Huitema

---

From: "Salz, Rich" <[email-masked]>
Date: Fri, 22 Oct 2021 17:08:19 +0000

So the common beliefs that things are taking longer is wrong (for the past 13 years!) and that the delays are because WG's are sending less-good documents to the IESG is wrong.  My theory for the possible increased mail traffic is that folks are doing more business between meetings, and the increased use of GitHub which increases volume because of increased participation.

Always good to have real numbers.

---

From: Keith Moore <[email-masked]>
Date: Fri, 22 Oct 2021 13:17:04 -0400

On 10/22/21 1:08 PM, Salz, Rich wrote:

> So the common beliefs that things are taking longer is wrong (for the past 13 years!) and that the delays are because WG's are sending less-good documents to the IESG is wrong.

It's possible that "publishing an RFC" is a poor metric for meaningful 
work accomplished, because not all RFCs are of equal utility or 
importance even though they have more-or-less equal overhead in publication.

Even if less-good I-Ds don't bog down IESG (maybe IESG just throws up 
its hands and gives up trying to fix things that aren't fixable?), they 
might bog down the working groups trying to produce them.   People work 
harder when they believe their work is meaningful and/or get feedback 
from others, and discussions are more productive when there are enough 
interested parties to actively participate in them.

> My theory for the possible increased mail traffic is that folks are doing more business between meetings, and the increased use of GitHub which increases volume because of increased participation.
>

  It's good to have real numbers - you can get some useful insights from 
them sometimes - as long as you don't consider them more meaningful than 
they are.

Keith

---

From: Colin Perkins <[email-masked]>
Date: Fri, 22 Oct 2021 19:13:02 +0100

> On 22 Oct 2021, at 18:08, Salz, Rich <rsalz=[email-masked]> wrote:
> 

The measurements we’ve done recently show that the median time to publish RFCs is still trending slowly upwards, although there’s a lot of variation. The number of drafts it takes before an RFC is published is also trending up, as is the number of citations from RFCs to other drafts and RFCs (i.e., there are more cross references between documents).

One view might be that there’s a lot more legacy protocols and a bigger installed base that we need to take into account now, so RFCs are more complex and take longer to produce. I’m sure there are other factors involved too. 

Lots more data in https://sodestream.github.io/paper-characterising-the-ietf-through-the-lens-of-rfc-deployment.html <https://sodestream.github.io/paper-characterising-the-ietf-through-the-lens-of-rfc-deployment.html> if people are interested. 

-- 
Colin Perkins
https://csperkins.org/ <https://csperkins.org/>

---

From: Phillip Hallam-Baker <[email-masked]>
Date: Sat, 23 Oct 2021 14:23:01 -0400

> If someone is incompetent, NomCom will not reappoint them even once, let

The problem with tenure isn't competence. Nobody objected to FDR's
competence.

The problem is concentration of power and the ossification of particular
points of view
which are not necessarily as well founded as the holder imagines.

---

From: Mary B <[email-masked]>
Date: Tue, 26 Oct 2021 15:21:13 -0500

Exactly.   The Nomcom can't make good decisions unless we get good feedback
from the community and in my experience a small percentage of the community
provides feedback.  We've had many discussions as to how this list doesn't
necessarily reflect overall community consensus, so Nomcom should not be
expected to consider this as input to the process (IMHO).

My personal opinion (Nomcom voting member hat off) is that If we actually
had lots of volunteers for these positions, then I'd absolutely support the
notion of ensuring folks didn't move from IESG to IAB (which is the most
common path I think) and so forth.  However, we don't have sufficient
resources in the community that are willing and able to serve in these
roles as is IMHO.  This will only make that problem worse.  And,
personally, I think we had two  great IETF chairs that each served 3
terms.  So, it's not clear to me we're solving a real problem with these
proposals.

Regards,
Mary.