Re: Confirming vs. second-guessing
The archives of the NomCom WG that generated RFC 3777 are now online: http://lists.elistx.com/archives/ietf-nomcom/ ___ IETF mailing list IETF@ietf.org https://www.ietf.org/mailman/listinfo/ietf
Re: Confirming vs. second-guessing
On Mar 17, 2008, at 11:38 PM, Fred Baker wrote: On Mar 17, 2008, at 10:05 PM, Lixia Zhang wrote: Call me an idealist:), I personally believe, generally speaking, it is better to put everything on the table, rather than partial info, between nomcom and confirming body. Step up a level: wonder where this discussion is leading to? Exactly how to revise 3777? It sounds like you would rather get rid of the nomcom and have the confirming body do the work from the start. Actually to the opposite: I firmly believed it is the nomcom who makes the selection. If you quote my full messages, I said First of all, I fully agree with others it should be the candidate's choice about what to disclose to whom. Just that personally and for myself, I would not mind whoever I had concern with to know about it. I have heard it said that the IETF, in the most recent discussion that failed up update that portion of what we now call 3777, had a 90/10 consensus and didn't come to a perfect consensus. I did not participate in 3777 formation. If above is the case, my own vote would be that 90/10 is a lot more than a rough consensus, and we should just write down precisely what that is. I think we have to say what the role and reach of the confirming body is, which may require us to think hard about what it means to have rough consensus. ___ IETF mailing list IETF@ietf.org https://www.ietf.org/mailman/listinfo/ietf
Re: Confirming vs. second-guessing
On Mon, Mar 17, 2008 at 11:38:20PM -0700, Fred Baker wrote: It sounds like you would rather get rid of the nomcom and have the confirming body do the work from the start. It's interesting to note that this would mean reverting our processes back to the pre-1993 days, back when the IAB *did* pick the IESG. One of the reasons why the Nomcom was created, way back then, was because of the July 4, 1992 fireworks (as I believe Vint Cerf termed them) on the IETF list. I've also heard it referred to as the Boston Tea Party of the IETF. To quote from Christian Huitema's, Network Protocols and Standards as to what happened: We thought that our wording was very careful, and we were prepared to discuss it and try to convince the Internet community. Then, everything accelerated. Some journalists got the news, an announcement was hastily written, and many members of the community felt betrayed. They perceived that we were selling the Internet to the ISO and that headquarters was simply giving the field to an enemy that they had fought for many years and eventually vanquished. The IAB had no right to make such a decision alone. Besides, CLNP was a pale imitation of IP. It had been designed 10 years before, and the market had failed to pick it up for all those years. Why should we try to resurrect it? The IAB announcement was followed by a tremendous hubbub in the Internet's electronic lists. The IAB draft was formally withdrawn a few weeks later, during the July 1992 meeting of the Internet Engineering Task Force (IETF). The incident triggered a serious reorganization of the whole IETF decision process, revising the role of managing bodies such as the Internet Engineering Steering Group (IESG) or the Internet Architecture Board, the new appellation of the IAB. At the time, there was a feeling that the IAB was out of touch, and that the Nomcom selection process was a better way of getting community consensus about the engineering leadership than the previous scheme where the IAB was a self-perpetuating body which selected the IESG. For a long time, given how hard the IAB had been slapped down, it pretty much let the Nomcom do most of the work, and when I submitted the 2001-2002 Nomcom report to the confirming bodies, what we provided was a brief resume and a short testament summarizing the deliberations and reasoning behind the choice (in most cases it was a paragraph or two). At least for the years when I was on Nomcom, the IAB did not request access to any of the questionaires or comments from the community; all we provided was 2-3 paragraphs describing some of the concerns and summarizing at a high level what the concerns which drove us to replace an incumbent and why we chose a particular new AD. It seems that since then, the IAB has been more assertive about wanting more information, and I really think we need to consider where the line is between performing due diligence and redoing the work of the NOMCOM. I personally like the line that we drew in the early 2000's; we told the confirming bodies the issues about why IESG or IAB members were not returned to the body, and why we picked new members. The confirming bodies asked us if we had considered certain issues, and we had to draft a response when went into more detail, but that was about it. I have heard it said that the IETF, in the most recent discussion that failed up update that portion of what we now call 3777, had a 90/10 consensus and didn't come to a perfect consensus. I think we have to say what the role and reach of the confirming body is, which may require us to think hard about what it means to have rough consensus. I'm not sure it was 90/10 consensus; at least in this recent discussion, there certainly have been a rather wide range of opinions on this list, from people like Mike St. John's with one view, and Steve Kent with another. - Ted ___ IETF mailing list IETF@ietf.org https://www.ietf.org/mailman/listinfo/ietf
RE: Confirming vs. second-guessing
Lets look at this from a security usability point of view. The whole nomcon process is opaque, all meetings and discussions are secret. Requests for comment are solicited in confidence. Given those circumstances it is a reasonable assumption for a participant to make that all nomcon actions are strictly confidential. In fact that is by far the most reasonable assumption to make. When you have a process that is vested in such a high degree of secrecy you will inevitably end up with a very high degree of suspicion. Secret processes are antithetical to accountability. The worst failure mode here is not that the nomcon is going to make the wrong choices and the IAB is unable to rescue them. The worst failure mode is that information that is released with a reasonable expectation of confidentiality is then disclosed. I would much prefer to have a process that is completely open except in regard to actual balloting. To paraphrase Dave Crocker: Why would we expect to be experts in the area? We do bits on the wire, design of political institutions is certainly not an area in which competency has been demonstrated. But a process that is assumed to be more confidential than it actually is would appear to be the worst of all cases. -Original Message- From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] on behalf of Steven M. Bellovin Sent: Mon 17/03/2008 10:08 PM To: Christian Huitema Cc: 'Fred Baker'; Dan Wing; 'IETF Discussion' Subject: Re: Confirming vs. second-guessing On Mon, 17 Mar 2008 18:44:49 -0700 Christian Huitema [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: And in order to make the confidentiality issue more concrete (ie, real) would folks offer some examples of what falls under it. I accept the nomination of area director. The current area director, Mr. J. Sixpack, has been attempting to impose his opinion that beer should contain rice. This is causing a rift in the working groups within the area. I would follow the area consensus that we should outlaw rice in beer and thus my appointment as new area director would achieve peace and harmony within the area. Why should such a statement be confidential? Try this one, quite non-hypothetical: a candidate for the IESG is contemplating switching jobs. His or her current employer does not yet know this. It has a clear bearing on whether or not that person can do the job of AD, but equally clearly should not be broadcast to the world. --Steve Bellovin, http://www.cs.columbia.edu/~smb ___ IETF mailing list IETF@ietf.org https://www.ietf.org/mailman/listinfo/ietf ___ IETF mailing list IETF@ietf.org https://www.ietf.org/mailman/listinfo/ietf
Re: Confirming vs. second-guessing
The inner comment, does not match my memory of the discussions. Theodore Tso wrote: Attributed to Fred Baker: I have heard it said that the IETF, in the most recent discussion that failed up update that portion of what we now call 3777, had a 90/10 consensus and didn't come to a perfect consensus. I think we have to say what the role and reach of the confirming body is, which may require us to think hard about what it means to have rough consensus. I'm not sure it was 90/10 consensus; at least in this recent discussion, there certainly have been a rather wide range of opinions on this list, from people like Mike St. John's with one view, and Steve Kent with another. - Ted There were a number of issues on which no consensus was reached, or on which there was not consensus to make a change. I don't think any of those were anywhere near as close as 90/10. Some of the don't change conclusions were probably a significant majority against the change. But I don't think there was ever a case that I saw where I thought 80 (much less 90) percent of the room wanted something, but the chairs ruled that there was no consensus. My concern about re-opening the document is in fact that opinions were very divided. Getting agreement on any change is going to be a lot of work, if it succeeds at all. Try to get rough consensus on clear words on something as divisive as how much oversight the confirming bodies should perform seems a recipe for failure. Yours, Joel ___ IETF mailing list IETF@ietf.org https://www.ietf.org/mailman/listinfo/ietf
RE: Confirming vs. second-guessing
But what is an 'obvious mistake in the result'? All I can think of is that the Nomcon would make a choice that the confirming body found controversial. While that might be because the ten momcon members somehow managed to remain ignorant that a particular person was incompetent, had a felony conviction or whatever, it seems much more likely that the confirming body is going to object to candidates who are insufficiently committed to the prevailing groupthink. This is somewhat more of a problem on the IAB than the IESG. As I pointed out at the plenary, the fact that the IETF transition plan for IPv6 is bogus has been apparent to many of us for many years. This is the type of observation that should be coming from the IAB. Instead the IAB is yet more inertia that has to be overcome. If you look at the IETF mailing list threads on IPv6 NAT beginning with the decision to kill NAT-PT you will see that at the start of the conversation I had virtually no support for my position that NAT represents an essential component in the IPv6 transition. Continuing to hold that position was certainly not the popular thing to do, but at this point there is a very clear consensus that IPv4-6 transition has to be transparent for the end user. The same thing happened on email authentication. It was certainly not a popular view in the anti-spam community when it was first proposed. The authentication faction was pretty isolated, we didn't get invited to speak at conferences in the early days. Telling people that everything is just splendid is going to make you so much more popular than trying to get people to face the brutal facts. A justification for the nomcon process would be if it actually increased the chance that unpopular dissident views would be represented in the IETF management. But the exact opposite is the case, every step in the process is designed to minimize the risk of contrarian views. And the IAB selection criteria in particular make the peculiar assertion that compatibility with the group consensus is considered an asset rather than a liability. -Original Message- From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] on behalf of Theodore Tso Sent: Mon 17/03/2008 11:52 PM To: Steven M. Bellovin Cc: Christian Huitema; 'Fred Baker'; Dan Wing; 'IETF Discussion' Subject: Re: Confirming vs. second-guessing On Tue, Mar 18, 2008 at 02:08:15AM +, Steven M. Bellovin wrote: Try this one, quite non-hypothetical: a candidate for the IESG is contemplating switching jobs. His or her current employer does not yet know this. It has a clear bearing on whether or not that person can do the job of AD, but equally clearly should not be broadcast to the world. A lot of whether you think information shared with NOMCOM should be confidential depends on whether you frame the process from the point of view of a governance issue, or from the point of view of personnel process. I think most poeple would agree that if you consider Nomcom as being more of a performance review or a hiring/firing process, then like most personnel issues, the information used to make these sorts of decisions should be treated as confidential. Certainly if I give feedback about my manager or vice president as part of some 360 review process, I would feel *quite* betrayed if that information was shared any further than it needed to be, lest that information get back to the person in question --- or to a close friend of the person in question. If you think of NOMCOM as being more of a governance question, then especially if you are from the United States, and in particular from those localities that have Open Meeting or Open Door laws that mandate complete transparency in governance where *all* meetings between any 2-3 goverment officials must be adequately noticed so the public can attend and minutes taken which are publically posted, then you'll probably also share the opinion that NOMCOM should run without any confidentiality at all. (As an aside, I've noticed that this is not true in all cultures, and there is variance on this depending on where you're from. I've been on committees where we debated this issue, and I recall some Europeans saying at this absolute insistance on complete transparency was quite daft --- their words --- and not the norm from their experience.) The problem is that NOMCOM process can be viewed through either lens equally well, and I suspect that's one of the reasons we don't have consensus on this issue. My personal bias, as a former NOMCOM chair, is to view NOMCOM as being more of a personnel process, and thus I believe that most information about the process should be kept confidential, *especially* if making it public were might dissuade some talented individuals from throwing their hat in the ring. As for the related issue concerning the role of the confirming body, I personally believe that the confirming body should act more as a *sanity check* than anything else. That is, it should
RE: Confirming vs. second-guessing
Well there you hit the problem of the status-quo veto. The most effective aspect of the IETF constitution is that it is essentially impossible to overturn the status-quo without arriving at a 'consensus', the existence of which is judged by the incumbent establishment. We cannot apparently arrive at a consensus on fixing the three stage standards track despite the incontrovertible facts that we are not following the three stage process today and the failure to advance specifications to full standard is harming the IETF reputation. Worse than that, we cannot apparently be told who the objectors are or even the grounds for the objection. -Original Message- From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] on behalf of Fred Baker Sent: Tue 18/03/2008 2:38 AM To: Lixia Zhang Cc: IETF Discussion Subject: Re: Confirming vs. second-guessing On Mar 17, 2008, at 10:05 PM, Lixia Zhang wrote: Call me an idealist:), I personally believe, generally speaking, it is better to put everything on the table, rather than partial info, between nomcom and confirming body. Step up a level: wonder where this discussion is leading to? Exactly how to revise 3777? It sounds like you would rather get rid of the nomcom and have the confirming body do the work from the start. I have heard it said that the IETF, in the most recent discussion that failed up update that portion of what we now call 3777, had a 90/10 consensus and didn't come to a perfect consensus. I think we have to say what the role and reach of the confirming body is, which may require us to think hard about what it means to have rough consensus. ___ IETF mailing list IETF@ietf.org https://www.ietf.org/mailman/listinfo/ietf ___ IETF mailing list IETF@ietf.org https://www.ietf.org/mailman/listinfo/ietf
Re: Confirming vs. second-guessing
Theodore Tso wrote: To quote from Christian Huitema's, Network Protocols and Standards as to what happened: We thought that our wording was very careful, and we were prepared to discuss it and try to convince the Internet community. ... The IAB had no right to make such a decision alone. Besides, CLNP was a pale imitation of IP. This wasn't about careful wording or reporters getting ahold of the story. This was about a premature and preemptive decision by the IAB. The nature of the need for a revision to IP had been under consideration by an assigned committee, for some time. The discussion about possible solutions had had almost no discussion at all. In fact, CLNP was a serious candidate. While some folk rejected it because of its ISO genes, that wasn't much of a focus at the time. Of more concern was the significant lack of large scale experience with it. That made the question more of a classic make-vs-buy issue. Could the IETF satisfy the needs of expanded address space with a small change to IPv4? Engineering Task Force (IETF). The incident triggered a serious reorganization of the whole IETF decision process, revising the role of managing bodies such as the Internet Engineering Steering Group (IESG) or the Internet Architecture Board, the new appellation of the IAB. A phrase like serious reorganization leads folk to miss how small the changes were, structurally. The existing structure of the IETF was retained. From the standpoint of organization structure, the changes were minimal, although of course they had huge impact. There were only two changes: 1. Decisions previously made by the IAB would now be made by the IESG 2. A formal and independent selection process for the IAB and IESG would be instituted. The IAB was retained but careful to avoid anything that looked like an attempt to exercise power. Over time, if found very useful tasks for itself. The question, today, seems to be whether it is moving too far into an exercise of powers it ought not to have. This isn't anything like the Boston Tea Party situation -- the organizational change was made at the IETF in Danville, whereas the offending decision was made in Kobe Japan -- since it is incremental and is clearly being reviewed as things change. The discussion taking place on this list would either not have taken place or would have been an exercise in futility. (I suppose it still might be, but for different reasons...) At the time, there was a feeling that the IAB was out of touch, and +1 Working group could go through their entire process of developing a specification and consensus around it, only to have the IAB reject it out of hand. At least for the years when I was on Nomcom, the IAB did not request access to any of the questionaires or comments from the community; all we provided was 2-3 paragraphs describing some of the concerns and summarizing at a high level what the concerns which drove us to replace an incumbent and why we chose a particular new AD. It seems that since then, the IAB has been more assertive about wanting more information, and I really think we need to consider where the line is between performing due diligence and redoing the work of the NOMCOM. Right. The current discussion should try to specify what exactly the boundaries and requirements for a confirming body are and what input is reasonable for them to have. I'm not sure it was 90/10 consensus; at least in this recent discussion, there certainly have been a rather wide range of opinions on this list, from people like Mike St. John's with one view, and Steve Kent with another. There is a wide range of opinion in our community, for pretty much any topic. That's one of the reasons we do not require unanimity. Saying that there was a 90% consensus is a very different datum. The IETF tends to let a few noisy folk veto rough consensus. While such folk sometime have concerns that are useful to address, trying to attend to those concerns is a different task from insisting that the concerns be satisfied. d/ -- Dave Crocker Brandenburg InternetWorking bbiw.net ___ IETF mailing list IETF@ietf.org https://www.ietf.org/mailman/listinfo/ietf
Re: Confirming vs. second-guessing
On Tue, Mar 18, 2008 at 08:24:39AM -0700, Dave Crocker wrote: This wasn't about careful wording or reporters getting ahold of the story. This was about a premature and preemptive decision by the IAB. I quoted Christian's story because it was the kindest towards the IAB. There were of course far uglier spins on the IAB that were running around, and the truth is somewhere between the two, I think. It's not really that important. I quoted it becuase I thought it might be useful to consider the history around the creation of the Nomcom. A phrase like serious reorganization leads folk to miss how small the changes were, structurally. The existing structure of the IETF was retained. From the standpoint of organization structure, the changes were minimal, although of course they had huge impact. There were only two changes: 1. Decisions previously made by the IAB would now be made by the IESG 2. A formal and independent selection process for the IAB and IESG would be instituted. The IAB was retained but careful to avoid anything that looked like an attempt to exercise power. Over time, if found very useful tasks for itself. We can dispute how small the changes actually were, but the key point was that IAB had nearly all of its power stripped from it, aside from the power to make recommendations and, and that was moved to the IESG. That was a pretty earth-shaking change to the power hierarchy, even if it was only executed using a few small changes. (As we all know, changing even a few lines of code can make a huge difference in how a program functions.) I suspect, but am not 100% sure, that the very early NOMCOM's, in 1993-1996, probably had their decisions close to rubber-stamped, given how badly the IAB had been slapped down by the events of the July, 1992. Eight years later, right after the turn of the century, it seemed they were exerting themselves more (and I think that was appropriate), and it seems to me that more recently, the pendulum has swung even further to the right. So perhaps it's not surprising that we're all over the map, since if you look at past practice over time we've been all over the map as well. The question, today, seems to be whether it is moving too far into an exercise of powers it ought not to have. This isn't anything like the Boston Tea Party situation -- the organizational change was made at the IETF in Danville, whereas the offending decision was made in Kobe Japan -- since it is incremental and is clearly being reviewed as things change. I agree that it's nothing like what happened in July, 1992, and we *are* having this discussion. The question indeed is what is the right level of powers is most appropriate for the IAB; ranging from nearly all powers stripped from it in 1993, to now where it is requesting access to substantially more documents than it had historically, and where a few are aruging that the trust boundary for the Nomcom and the confirming bodies should be the same (i.e., that the confirming bodies get to see all or nearly all of what the Nomcom gets to see.) Right. The current discussion should try to specify what exactly the boundaries and requirements for a confirming body are and what input is reasonable for them to have. And furthermore, give more clarifications about when a confirming body should try to act. I believe, for example, that if a confirming body were to say, yes, we believe that Person A would do an adequate job, but Person B will do the job 10% better, and we will reject the slate until you select person B, that this would be an abuse of the confirming body's powers. If instead the feedback is, we believe this person is totally unqualified, or if you select this person half of the volunteer IETF members in the area will walk off in a huff, that's a very different, and appropriate feedback from the confirming body. In between these two areas, of couse, is a rather large grey area... - Ted ___ IETF mailing list IETF@ietf.org https://www.ietf.org/mailman/listinfo/ietf
RE: Confirming vs. second-guessing
The minutes of that meeting are online, its pretty much the point at which the system then broke for many years: http://www.iab.org/documents/iabmins/IABmins.1992-06-18.html Understanding this particular history is rather helpful if you want to understand the early history of the World Wide Web Consortium. -Original Message- From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] on behalf of Theodore Tso Sent: Tue 18/03/2008 2:02 PM To: Dave Crocker Cc: IETF Discussion Subject: Re: Confirming vs. second-guessing On Tue, Mar 18, 2008 at 08:24:39AM -0700, Dave Crocker wrote: This wasn't about careful wording or reporters getting ahold of the story. This was about a premature and preemptive decision by the IAB. I quoted Christian's story because it was the kindest towards the IAB. There were of course far uglier spins on the IAB that were running around, and the truth is somewhere between the two, I think. It's not really that important. I quoted it becuase I thought it might be useful to consider the history around the creation of the Nomcom. A phrase like serious reorganization leads folk to miss how small the changes were, structurally. The existing structure of the IETF was retained. From the standpoint of organization structure, the changes were minimal, although of course they had huge impact. There were only two changes: 1. Decisions previously made by the IAB would now be made by the IESG 2. A formal and independent selection process for the IAB and IESG would be instituted. The IAB was retained but careful to avoid anything that looked like an attempt to exercise power. Over time, if found very useful tasks for itself. We can dispute how small the changes actually were, but the key point was that IAB had nearly all of its power stripped from it, aside from the power to make recommendations and, and that was moved to the IESG. That was a pretty earth-shaking change to the power hierarchy, even if it was only executed using a few small changes. (As we all know, changing even a few lines of code can make a huge difference in how a program functions.) I suspect, but am not 100% sure, that the very early NOMCOM's, in 1993-1996, probably had their decisions close to rubber-stamped, given how badly the IAB had been slapped down by the events of the July, 1992. Eight years later, right after the turn of the century, it seemed they were exerting themselves more (and I think that was appropriate), and it seems to me that more recently, the pendulum has swung even further to the right. So perhaps it's not surprising that we're all over the map, since if you look at past practice over time we've been all over the map as well. The question, today, seems to be whether it is moving too far into an exercise of powers it ought not to have. This isn't anything like the Boston Tea Party situation -- the organizational change was made at the IETF in Danville, whereas the offending decision was made in Kobe Japan -- since it is incremental and is clearly being reviewed as things change. I agree that it's nothing like what happened in July, 1992, and we *are* having this discussion. The question indeed is what is the right level of powers is most appropriate for the IAB; ranging from nearly all powers stripped from it in 1993, to now where it is requesting access to substantially more documents than it had historically, and where a few are aruging that the trust boundary for the Nomcom and the confirming bodies should be the same (i.e., that the confirming bodies get to see all or nearly all of what the Nomcom gets to see.) Right. The current discussion should try to specify what exactly the boundaries and requirements for a confirming body are and what input is reasonable for them to have. And furthermore, give more clarifications about when a confirming body should try to act. I believe, for example, that if a confirming body were to say, yes, we believe that Person A would do an adequate job, but Person B will do the job 10% better, and we will reject the slate until you select person B, that this would be an abuse of the confirming body's powers. If instead the feedback is, we believe this person is totally unqualified, or if you select this person half of the volunteer IETF members in the area will walk off in a huff, that's a very different, and appropriate feedback from the confirming body. In between these two areas, of couse, is a rather large grey area... - Ted ___ IETF mailing list IETF@ietf.org https://www.ietf.org/mailman/listinfo/ietf ___ IETF mailing list IETF@ietf.org https://www.ietf.org/mailman/listinfo/ietf
RE: Confirming vs. second-guessing
Yep, they didn't even know how to spell FOREWORD. Ole Ole J. Jacobsen Editor and Publisher, The Internet Protocol Journal Cisco Systems Tel: +1 408-527-8972 Mobile: +1 415-370-4628 E-mail: [EMAIL PROTECTED] URL: http://www.cisco.com/ipj On Tue, 18 Mar 2008, Hallam-Baker, Phillip wrote: The minutes of that meeting are online, its pretty much the point at which the system then broke for many years: http://www.iab.org/documents/iabmins/IABmins.1992-06-18.html Understanding this particular history is rather helpful if you want to understand the early history of the World Wide Web Consortium. ___ IETF mailing list IETF@ietf.org https://www.ietf.org/mailman/listinfo/ietf
Re: Confirming vs. second-guessing
Agreeing with Brian's dislike of http://www.iab.org/documents/docs/2003-07-23-nomcom.html, it was drafted, as far as I know, before RFC 3777 was published. RFC 3777 defines the process, with the consensus of the IETF community as a whole. I suggest that the IAB at least review its requirements document within the process defined by RFC 3777. I think it would be more appropriate and more in keeping with RFC 3777 for the IAB to publish minimal or no a priori requirements, leaving to the Nomcom the responsibility for the provision of adequate documentation in support of its nominaions. As Brian writes, the IAB can ask for specific additional information in those cases where it finds that information is necessary to complete its due diligence. - Ralph On Mon, 17 Mar 2008, Brian E Carpenter wrote: On 2008-03-17 14:16, Ralph Droms wrote: On Sun, 16 Mar 2008, Michael StJohns wrote: [...] Put another way, the Nomcom is a search committee, but the hiring authority resides in the confirming bodies. Mike - I fundamentally and strongly disagree. In my opinoin, the Nomcom is the hiring committee; the confirming body is the oversight and sanity check body. The Nomcom is selected from the IETF as a whole to select the management for the IETF, who then serve at the pleasure of the IETF as a whole. The confirming bodies do not form a hierarchical management or hiring organization; rather, they perform a final check and review of the process. To put it very slightly otherwise, the nomcom is supposed to represent the whole community in the process of appointing people - maybe it would be better named as the appointments committee. The confirming bodies are supposed to provide a check that due process has been followed and that the proposed appointees are suitable, but they are clearly doing that as guardians of the process. I believe that it's appropriate for the confirming bodies to ask for additional information if they have reason to doubt that due proces has been followed or that some of the proposed appointees are suitable. I agree that they are inside the confidentiality boundary, too, and this should be made clear to all concerned. What I don't like about http://www.iab.org/documents/docs/2003-07-23-nomcom.html is that the materials are requested a priori, as if *every* NomCom choice is suspect. I think these are questions that should only be asked if the confirming body has specific reason to query a choice. (With one exception: it is quite reasonable to request a resume or CV a priori.) Brian ___ IETF mailing list IETF@ietf.org https://www.ietf.org/mailman/listinfo/ietf
Re: Confirming vs. second-guessing
I believe that it's appropriate for the confirming bodies to ask for additional information if they have reason to doubt that due proces has been followed or that some of the proposed appointees are suitable. Isn't one of the roles of the liaisons to ensure that due process is followed to the extent required by the body they represent, and to give advanced notice when the choice of candidate is likely to be unacceptable to their body? Stewart ___ IETF mailing list IETF@ietf.org https://www.ietf.org/mailman/listinfo/ietf
RE: Confirming vs. second-guessing
I think you have the whole confirmation process backwards. If you start from the premise that the absolute priority is to keep control in the hands of the establishment you naturally arrive at a need for at least two bodies arranged so that each acts as a guardianship council to the other. Having arrived at the need for a confirmation process you then have to work out how to explain why they should exercise veto power over the consensus of the body as a whole. Nomcon provides a surrogate for consensus but in a form that ensures that there is no mandate. I know that people can find arguments as to why this is better than Nomcon qualified IETF participants having a vote. I got rather tired of arguments of the form 'this is better than democracy' after hearing them used to defend the 'need' to build the Berlin wall. -Original Message- From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] on behalf of Ralph Droms Sent: Sun 16/03/2008 9:16 PM To: Michael StJohns Cc: IETF Discussion Subject: Re: Confirming vs. second-guessing On Sun, 16 Mar 2008, Michael StJohns wrote: [...] Put another way, the Nomcom is a search committee, but the hiring authority resides in the confirming bodies. Mike - I fundamentally and strongly disagree. In my opinoin, the Nomcom is the hiring committee; the confirming body is the oversight and sanity check body. The Nomcom is selected from the IETF as a whole to select the management for the IETF, who then serve at the pleasure of the IETF as a whole. The confirming bodies do not form a hierarchical management or hiring organization; rather, they perform a final check and review of the process. - Ralph ___ IETF mailing list IETF@ietf.org https://www.ietf.org/mailman/listinfo/ietf ___ IETF mailing list IETF@ietf.org https://www.ietf.org/mailman/listinfo/ietf
Re: Confirming vs. second-guessing
On 3/16/2008 7:36 PM, Michael StJohns wrote: My apologies, I was going to leave this alone, but this ... chastisement .. is off-target. At 09:50 PM 3/16/2008, Joel M. Halpern wrote: Mike, whatever your personal opinion, based on the public information many people have concluded in good faith that something went wrong. I agree with this. Something went wrong. Asserting that the problems are FUD does not help anyone resolve this. I'm sorry you didn't actually read what I wrote. I did not refer to the problems as FUD. I called one specific statement by LD FUD and hogwash. The statement was an attempt to use an emotional response to an unlikely or improbable action by the IAB sometime in the future to gain an outcome (e.g. don't let this dangerous precedent stand) that matched his personal belief. What would you call it if not FUD? Never mind. Substitute an emotional appeal for FUD and This is an absurd extrapolation of what the IAB may do in the far future for hogwash and see if you like the text better. I guess I should respond to this. Why would the extrapolation be absurd? Where is it stated that a confirmation body cannot seek such information? One of the IAB requirements is to provide a summary of feedback on a candidate. From there to asking for verbatim feedback is not a stretch. I am not saying IAB would ask for this. I am saying one of the confirmation bodies could ask for this and the nomcom would be in the same situation. Expressing incredulity does not work in such situations. I have tried. regards, Lakshminath Mike ___ IETF mailing list IETF@ietf.org https://www.ietf.org/mailman/listinfo/ietf
Re: Confirming vs. second-guessing
Fred Baker wrote: are confidential to the nomcom. For example, every question including a new do you have anything else you would like to add question needs to have two slots, one confidential to the nomcom and one confidential to the nomcom plus the confirming body. How about something even simpler: The form is not confidential. If a candidate feels the need to share something confidential, they submit it separately and clearly marked. And in order to make the confidentiality issue more concrete (ie, real) would folks offer some examples of what falls under it. Obviously I'm not asking about a traceable example, but something that moves this from a theoretical exercise to something where the community can agree it really is worth the effort to maintain confidentiality. d/ -- Dave Crocker Brandenburg InternetWorking bbiw.net ___ IETF mailing list IETF@ietf.org https://www.ietf.org/mailman/listinfo/ietf
RE: Confirming vs. second-guessing
There is an expectation that the information provided to the nominating committee is confidential. The confirming body needs some information to determine whether the candidate fits the stated requirements. There is a simple solution to that. The nomcom asks the candidates a number of questions. A new form needs to be developed that informs the candidate that the information given will be available to the confirming bodies, and gives the candidate a way to say things that are confidential to the nomcom. For example, every question including a new do you have anything else you would like to add question needs to have two slots, one confidential to the nomcom and one confidential to the nomcom plus the confirming body. I was on NOMCOM this year, and Fred's suggestion would solve this problem perfectly. -d ___ IETF mailing list IETF@ietf.org https://www.ietf.org/mailman/listinfo/ietf
RE: Confirming vs. second-guessing
And in order to make the confidentiality issue more concrete (ie, real) would folks offer some examples of what falls under it. I accept the nomination of area director. The current area director, Mr. J. Sixpack, has been attempting to impose his opinion that beer should contain rice. This is causing a rift in the working groups within the area. I would follow the area consensus that we should outlaw rice in beer and thus my appointment as new area director would achieve peace and harmony within the area. -d ___ IETF mailing list IETF@ietf.org https://www.ietf.org/mailman/listinfo/ietf
RE: Confirming vs. second-guessing
And in order to make the confidentiality issue more concrete (ie, real) would folks offer some examples of what falls under it. I accept the nomination of area director. The current area director, Mr. J. Sixpack, has been attempting to impose his opinion that beer should contain rice. This is causing a rift in the working groups within the area. I would follow the area consensus that we should outlaw rice in beer and thus my appointment as new area director would achieve peace and harmony within the area. Why should such a statement be confidential? -- Christian Huitema ___ IETF mailing list IETF@ietf.org https://www.ietf.org/mailman/listinfo/ietf
RE: Confirming vs. second-guessing
And in order to make the confidentiality issue more concrete (ie, real) would folks offer some examples of what falls under it. I accept the nomination of area director. The current area director, Mr. J. Sixpack, has been attempting to impose his opinion that beer should contain rice. This is causing a rift in the working groups within the area. I would follow the area consensus that we should outlaw rice in beer and thus my appointment as new area director would achieve peace and harmony within the area. Why should such a statement be confidential? Imagine it is complaining about an IAB member, and the IAB is the confirming body. That outgoing IAB member is part of the IAB until the new IAB is seated. That outgoing IAB member may well take offense to someone thinking rice is unsuitable for beer. -d ___ IETF mailing list IETF@ietf.org https://www.ietf.org/mailman/listinfo/ietf
Re: Confirming vs. second-guessing
On Mon, 17 Mar 2008 18:44:49 -0700 Christian Huitema [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: And in order to make the confidentiality issue more concrete (ie, real) would folks offer some examples of what falls under it. I accept the nomination of area director. The current area director, Mr. J. Sixpack, has been attempting to impose his opinion that beer should contain rice. This is causing a rift in the working groups within the area. I would follow the area consensus that we should outlaw rice in beer and thus my appointment as new area director would achieve peace and harmony within the area. Why should such a statement be confidential? Try this one, quite non-hypothetical: a candidate for the IESG is contemplating switching jobs. His or her current employer does not yet know this. It has a clear bearing on whether or not that person can do the job of AD, but equally clearly should not be broadcast to the world. --Steve Bellovin, http://www.cs.columbia.edu/~smb ___ IETF mailing list IETF@ietf.org https://www.ietf.org/mailman/listinfo/ietf
Re: Confirming vs. second-guessing
On Mar 17, 2008, at 8:08 PM, Steven M. Bellovin wrote: Try this one, quite non-hypothetical: a candidate for the IESG is contemplating switching jobs. His or her current employer does not yet know this. It has a clear bearing on whether or not that person can do the job of AD, but equally clearly should not be broadcast to the world. Indeed. And this is one of the concerns with the confirming body seeing information as well. For example, assume that a willing nominee for a given AD position wishes to complain about the incumbent AD in their questionnaire and where the incumbent went wrong with the area, and they both work same employer. The willing nominee decides that providing some detailed information on the issues at hand to the NomCom is fine because it will be kept in confidence. However, what they don't realize is that there are folks on the confirming body that also work for that employer, and they'd be reluctant (for any of an array of reasons) to share that feedback if they knew those folks within their company would see it.. This would apply equally in SMB's scenario. Same sort of issue, quite plausible, methinks. -danny ___ IETF mailing list IETF@ietf.org https://www.ietf.org/mailman/listinfo/ietf
Re: Confirming vs. second-guessing
Christian Huitema wrote: And in order to make the confidentiality issue more concrete (ie, real) would folks offer some examples of what falls under it. I accept the nomination of area director. The current area director, Mr. J. Sixpack, has been attempting to impose his opinion that beer should contain rice. This is causing a rift in the working groups within the area. I would follow the area consensus that we should outlaw rice in beer and thus my appointment as new area director would achieve peace and harmony within the area. Why should such a statement be confidential? Actually, it's an interesting example, because it has almost nothing to do with the candidate and a great deal to do with criticizing a sitting AD. So the statements There is a rift within the area and I promise to follow area consensus surely have nothing sensitive in them, while attempting to impose his opinion surely does. Whether such criticism should be subject to public scrutiny very reasonably ought to be the decision of the critic. There is a very real possibility -- and some would argue even the history -- that criticizing a member of IETF management can damage one's ability to get things done. So concern about confidentiality of criticism strikes me as reasonable. Whether one really believes that such confidential statements really remain fully confidential is an entirely separate matter. d/ -- Dave Crocker Brandenburg InternetWorking bbiw.net ___ IETF mailing list IETF@ietf.org https://www.ietf.org/mailman/listinfo/ietf
Re: Confirming vs. second-guessing
On Mar 17, 2008, at 7:08 PM, Steven M. Bellovin wrote: On Mon, 17 Mar 2008 18:44:49 -0700 Christian Huitema [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: And in order to make the confidentiality issue more concrete (ie, real) would folks offer some examples of what falls under it. I accept the nomination of area director. The current area director, Mr. J. Sixpack, has been attempting to impose his opinion that beer should contain rice. This is causing a rift in the working groups within the area. I would follow the area consensus that we should outlaw rice in beer and thus my appointment as new area director would achieve peace and harmony within the area. Why should such a statement be confidential? Try this one, quite non-hypothetical: a candidate for the IESG is contemplating switching jobs. His or her current employer does not yet know this. It has a clear bearing on whether or not that person can do the job of AD, but equally clearly should not be broadcast to the world. - it could be the case that one of NOMCOM members were in the same company withe the candidate - and the confidentiality rule protects the candidate, right? - shouldn't/isn't the confirming body bounded by the same confidentiality rule? Lixia ___ IETF mailing list IETF@ietf.org https://www.ietf.org/mailman/listinfo/ietf
Re: Confirming vs. second-guessing
On Tue, Mar 18, 2008 at 02:08:15AM +, Steven M. Bellovin wrote: Try this one, quite non-hypothetical: a candidate for the IESG is contemplating switching jobs. His or her current employer does not yet know this. It has a clear bearing on whether or not that person can do the job of AD, but equally clearly should not be broadcast to the world. A lot of whether you think information shared with NOMCOM should be confidential depends on whether you frame the process from the point of view of a governance issue, or from the point of view of personnel process. I think most poeple would agree that if you consider Nomcom as being more of a performance review or a hiring/firing process, then like most personnel issues, the information used to make these sorts of decisions should be treated as confidential. Certainly if I give feedback about my manager or vice president as part of some 360 review process, I would feel *quite* betrayed if that information was shared any further than it needed to be, lest that information get back to the person in question --- or to a close friend of the person in question. If you think of NOMCOM as being more of a governance question, then especially if you are from the United States, and in particular from those localities that have Open Meeting or Open Door laws that mandate complete transparency in governance where *all* meetings between any 2-3 goverment officials must be adequately noticed so the public can attend and minutes taken which are publically posted, then you'll probably also share the opinion that NOMCOM should run without any confidentiality at all. (As an aside, I've noticed that this is not true in all cultures, and there is variance on this depending on where you're from. I've been on committees where we debated this issue, and I recall some Europeans saying at this absolute insistance on complete transparency was quite daft --- their words --- and not the norm from their experience.) The problem is that NOMCOM process can be viewed through either lens equally well, and I suspect that's one of the reasons we don't have consensus on this issue. My personal bias, as a former NOMCOM chair, is to view NOMCOM as being more of a personnel process, and thus I believe that most information about the process should be kept confidential, *especially* if making it public were might dissuade some talented individuals from throwing their hat in the ring. As for the related issue concerning the role of the confirming body, I personally believe that the confirming body should act more as a *sanity check* than anything else. That is, it should question any obvious process violations that it noticed or had brought to its attention (perhaps through the Laison) and if some choice has some obvious problems that might harm the IETF if said selection should go forward, the confirming body should ask questions. However, if there are two obvious, viable candidates, and the choice of one or the other is a 60/40 or a 55/45 question, I do **not** believe it is the place of the confirming body to request so much information so they can second-guess the NOMCOM and determine whether they made that 60/40 or 45/55 call correctly. This is more than rubber-stamp, in that the confirming body should call into question obvious mistakes in the result or process (or what might be appear to obvious mistakes). But there is a far cry between that and guaranteeing that the NOMCOM made the correct decision. In order to do the latter the confirming body would need a lot more information and effective redo the work of the NOMCOM in order to effectively check their sums; and I don't believe that is a healthy or useful use of the confirming body's time. However, I don't believe (although I would be delighted if I was wrong) that we have consensus on this point, either... - Ted ___ IETF mailing list IETF@ietf.org https://www.ietf.org/mailman/listinfo/ietf
Re: Confirming vs. second-guessing
At 07:18 PM 3/16/2008, Dave Crocker wrote: I'm unsure how the confirming body confirms the candidate without also being apprised of this information. This seems to go to the heart of a long-standing dilemma in the IETF: Is it the job of a reviewing body to pre-empt lengthy and diligent work or is it the job of a reviewing body to the work was done diligently and competently? I think you're missing a decide if before the work in the second line? I think this is kind of a slanted (sorry) statement of the problem. I'd put it more like: Is it the job of the reviewing body to make an independent decision on the candidates suitability, or is it the only job of the reviewing body to protect the process irrespective of the actual nominations? These are very different jobs. Whether Nomcom or a working group, a decision process over a long period of time represents extensive research, deliberation, and balancing among trade-offs. This is something that simply cannot be replicated by another person or body spending a few days or even weeks on review. The Nomcom has to winnow through a pile of candidates, discussion, gathering information, discarding and ultimately selecting the one person (or for IAB group of persons) that it is recommending for selection. That takes lots of time and effort. Taking the information which applies only to those candidates, reviewing it, and making a decision, hopefully takes less time given the appropriate documentation. Put another way, the Nomcom is a search committee, but the hiring authority resides in the confirming bodies. If they are not replicating the decision process, they are doing something else. The rest of this message is sort of ignoring the whole winnowing process done by the Nomcom. The CBs don't repeat that, they can only act on the candidates provided to them. The CBs provide a check and balance, not the original research. Since I mostly don't agree with the premise the reviewing bodies are repeating the Nomcom's job if they consider candidates qualifications, I don't really have comments on the rest of the message. As long as we have no consensus about the nature of the job to be done by a reviewing body, we are going to suffer with its thinking can can reasonably second-guess primary bodies. d/ -- And on this we agree. Mike ___ IETF mailing list IETF@ietf.org https://www.ietf.org/mailman/listinfo/ietf
Re: Confirming vs. second-guessing
On Sun, 16 Mar 2008, Michael StJohns wrote: [...] Put another way, the Nomcom is a search committee, but the hiring authority resides in the confirming bodies. Mike - I fundamentally and strongly disagree. In my opinoin, the Nomcom is the hiring committee; the confirming body is the oversight and sanity check body. The Nomcom is selected from the IETF as a whole to select the management for the IETF, who then serve at the pleasure of the IETF as a whole. The confirming bodies do not form a hierarchical management or hiring organization; rather, they perform a final check and review of the process. - Ralph ___ IETF mailing list IETF@ietf.org https://www.ietf.org/mailman/listinfo/ietf
Re: Confirming vs. second-guessing
I have misunderstood before, but one point of view I've heard expressed was that - NomCom is supposed to choose the best candidate, while - the confirming body is supposed to make sure NomCom chose a good candidate does this remotely map onto either Mike's or Ralph's point of view in this thread? Spencer, who volunteers for every NomCom, and who has never been selected to serve in any capacity... ___ IETF mailing list IETF@ietf.org https://www.ietf.org/mailman/listinfo/ietf
Re: Confirming vs. second-guessing
:-) This is a slight misquote of my The Nomcom's goal should be to select the best qualified candidates from the pool of volunteers. The confirming bodies should confirm any candidate they believe to be fully qualified. N.B.; Reasonable people can differ on whether any given candidate is fully qualified and the fact the Nomcom considers someone qualified is simply input into the CBs deliberations as opposed to a given fact. At 09:22 PM 3/16/2008, Spencer Dawkins wrote: I have misunderstood before, but one point of view I've heard expressed was that - NomCom is supposed to choose the best candidate, while - the confirming body is supposed to make sure NomCom chose a good candidate does this remotely map onto either Mike's or Ralph's point of view in this thread? ___ IETF mailing list IETF@ietf.org https://www.ietf.org/mailman/listinfo/ietf
Re: Confirming vs. second-guessing
I know that when 3777 was being written, the question of what the confirming bodies should do was discussed. No clear answer was available. However, my perception of what happened included rulting out two possible answers: 1) The confirming bodies are not supposed to be a rubber stamp. They are supposed to apply judgment, and actually review the nominations (including, but not limited to, the process.) 2) Equally, the confirming bodies are not supposed to repeat the nominating committees activities. Whatever the confirmation is, it is NOT asking is this the answer the confirming body would come up with. There is a line to be walked balancing the various interests. I am aware that by the nature of this process, those of us outside do not have enough information to really judge what has happened. Unfortunately, it is those of us outside who have to decide if the current rules work, or if different rules should be applied. Mike, whatever your personal opinion, based on the public information many people have concluded in good faith that something went wrong. Asserting that the problems are FUD does not help anyone resolve this. At the same time, for all the concerns (some of which I share) it is quite clear to me that the IAB was acting in good faith. They were trying their best to do what we had asked, namely to perform meaningful review of the slate they were handed. I have my doubts about the utility of actually re-opening 3777. For one thing, I don't actually think we are in a better position to actually write a definition of the confirmation process. And while I would like to make candidate names public at a suitable point in the process, I lost that argument last time and do not see that much has changed to justify re-opening it. (We usually insist that folks can not revisit a WG decision without an indication of change.) On the other hand, making clear what parts of the questionnaire may be shared with the confirming bodies seems like a very good idea. I know that I would have been very surprised if someone said that the IAB was going to see the questionnaires in full. While I have heard the argument that the nomcom can extend the confidentiality umbrella as far as they want, it seems to me that extending it that far would be a mistake. Yours, Joel M. Halpern Michael StJohns wrote: At 07:18 PM 3/16/2008, Dave Crocker wrote: I'm unsure how the confirming body confirms the candidate without also being apprised of this information. This seems to go to the heart of a long-standing dilemma in the IETF: Is it the job of a reviewing body to pre-empt lengthy and diligent work or is it the job of a reviewing body to the work was done diligently and competently? I think you're missing a decide if before the work in the second line? I think this is kind of a slanted (sorry) statement of the problem. I'd put it more like: Is it the job of the reviewing body to make an independent decision on the candidates suitability, or is it the only job of the reviewing body to protect the process irrespective of the actual nominations? These are very different jobs. Whether Nomcom or a working group, a decision process over a long period of time represents extensive research, deliberation, and balancing among trade-offs. This is something that simply cannot be replicated by another person or body spending a few days or even weeks on review. The Nomcom has to winnow through a pile of candidates, discussion, gathering information, discarding and ultimately selecting the one person (or for IAB group of persons) that it is recommending for selection. That takes lots of time and effort. Taking the information which applies only to those candidates, reviewing it, and making a decision, hopefully takes less time given the appropriate documentation. Put another way, the Nomcom is a search committee, but the hiring authority resides in the confirming bodies. If they are not replicating the decision process, they are doing something else. The rest of this message is sort of ignoring the whole winnowing process done by the Nomcom. The CBs don't repeat that, they can only act on the candidates provided to them. The CBs provide a check and balance, not the original research. Since I mostly don't agree with the premise the reviewing bodies are repeating the Nomcom's job if they consider candidates qualifications, I don't really have comments on the rest of the message. As long as we have no consensus about the nature of the job to be done by a reviewing body, we are going to suffer with its thinking can can reasonably second-guess primary bodies. d/ -- And on this we agree. Mike ___ IETF mailing list IETF@ietf.org https://www.ietf.org/mailman/listinfo/ietf ___ IETF mailing list
Re: Confirming vs. second-guessing
At 09:16 PM 3/16/2008, Ralph Droms wrote: On Sun, 16 Mar 2008, Michael StJohns wrote: [...] Put another way, the Nomcom is a search committee, but the hiring authority resides in the confirming bodies. Mike - I fundamentally and strongly disagree. In my opinoin, the Nomcom is the hiring committee; the confirming body is the oversight and sanity check body. The Nomcom is selected from the IETF as a whole to select the management for the IETF, who then serve at the pleasure of the IETF as a whole. The confirming bodies do not form a hierarchical management or hiring organization; rather, they perform a final check and review of the process. - Ralph And I think this is the nut of the matter. If the IETF agrees with you, the best thing they can do is rewrite 3777 to eliminate the confirmation process, as there is no possible way to do any reasonable sanity and oversight without a complete end-to-end view of the process. E.g. leave it to the liaison's and past-chairs to deal with those is the process good? matters. But the text of all the Nomcom process documents back to the first (RFC2027) says review the candidates...and then consent to some, all or none of the candidates. Review the candidates - NOT review the process by which the candidates were selected. This is the black letter reading of ALL of versions of the chain of Nomcom documents and I believe it is in opposition to your opinion. I'm going to self-initiate a personal 24 hour hold down. I'm going to refrain from any more comments on this topic or the other chain until tomorrow night just to see if anyone else has anything to say.. :-) Later, Mike ___ IETF mailing list IETF@ietf.org https://www.ietf.org/mailman/listinfo/ietf
Re: Confirming vs. second-guessing
My apologies, I was going to leave this alone, but this ... chastisement .. is off-target. At 09:50 PM 3/16/2008, Joel M. Halpern wrote: Mike, whatever your personal opinion, based on the public information many people have concluded in good faith that something went wrong. I agree with this. Something went wrong. Asserting that the problems are FUD does not help anyone resolve this. I'm sorry you didn't actually read what I wrote. I did not refer to the problems as FUD. I called one specific statement by LD FUD and hogwash. The statement was an attempt to use an emotional response to an unlikely or improbable action by the IAB sometime in the future to gain an outcome (e.g. don't let this dangerous precedent stand) that matched his personal belief. What would you call it if not FUD? Never mind. Substitute an emotional appeal for FUD and This is an absurd extrapolation of what the IAB may do in the far future for hogwash and see if you like the text better. Mike ___ IETF mailing list IETF@ietf.org https://www.ietf.org/mailman/listinfo/ietf
Re: Confirming vs. second-guessing
On Sun, 16 Mar 2008 18:31:24 -0700 Dave Crocker [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: Spencer Dawkins wrote: I have misunderstood before, but one point of view I've heard expressed was that - NomCom is supposed to choose the best candidate, while - the confirming body is supposed to make sure NomCom chose a good candidate That sounds like exactly the opposite of a rational sequence. Nomcom's always do an early filter against clear inadequacy. If that leaves no candidates, they search for more. This is like doing late-stage reviews, after a working group has been operating for two years, and raising strategic concerns about their entire apporach: Good issues, but at the wrong time. So what do you see as the role of the confirming body? --Steve Bellovin, http://www.cs.columbia.edu/~smb ___ IETF mailing list IETF@ietf.org https://www.ietf.org/mailman/listinfo/ietf
Re: Confirming vs. second-guessing
Michael StJohns wrote: Is it the job of a reviewing body to pre-empt lengthy and diligent work or is it the job of a reviewing body to the work was done diligently and competently? I think you're missing a decide if before the work in the second line? Yeah. See. We can start with something we agree on. But then, agreeing on my having missed something is no challenge. I think this is kind of a slanted (sorry) statement of the problem. I'd put it more like: Is it the job of the reviewing body to make an independent decision on the candidates suitability, or is it the only job of the reviewing body to protect the process irrespective of the actual nominations? Glossing over the linguistic subtleties, I think that the recent reality behind make an independent decision is that it is functionally identical to second-guess. My choice of language is certainly biased, but then I was (and am) trying to emphasize the impact on the entire process. People who do line work are undermined if their work is constantly subject to reversal, unless the work is legitimately flawed. It's not the job of the review process to replicate the work, but to confirm it's quality. There is a difference. Perhaps by independent you meant that it must have substance rather than be an automatic approval. If so, we certainly agree. Where we differ is about methods. These are very different jobs. Whether Nomcom or a working group, a decision process over a long period of time represents extensive research, deliberation, and balancing among trade-offs. This is something that simply cannot be replicated by another person or body spending a few days or even weeks on review. The Nomcom has to winnow through a pile of candidates, discussion, gathering information, discarding and ultimately selecting the one person (or for IAB group of persons) that it is recommending for selection. That takes lots of time and effort. Taking the information which applies only to those candidates, reviewing it, and making a decision, hopefully takes less time given the appropriate documentation. Sampling error. Experimenter bias. Something like that... To pursue your model, the review committee is given a subset of the source data and none of the history involved in doing the winnowing, and is somehow supposed to be able to perform as well or better than the primary group? These sorts of decision processes are dominated by trade-offs. The review body has none of that protracted context that is leads to the decision among the trade-offs. Nor can that context be replicated easily or even very well. That's why a review has to have more to do with verifying that the process of the primary group was diligent. You don't get that by looking over source data. I do add that a review body might believe it holds special knowledge -- that is, source data -- that it deems important, and it well might use that in its dialogue with the primary group. This is more than mere process review and I, for one, think it entirely appropriate. As a basis for dialogue. In the case of Nomcom work, it's pretty rare, however, for that dialogue to result in a reversal, since Nomcoms really are typically quite diligent -- and/or the review body does not focus on the right basis for reversal... (I think quite rare translates to never but of course we'll never know.) Put another way, the Nomcom is a search committee, but the hiring authority resides in the confirming bodies. Yes, that is the myth. And that's why it is labelled Nominating Committee. But it really is only a myth, since the repercussions of an outright rejection are pretty onerous. Even if we skip over my potentially unpleasant assessment of reality, I'll repeat my above observation about the effect of undermining folks who do primary work. If they are not replicating the decision process, they are doing something else. The rest of this message is sort of ignoring the whole winnowing process done by the Nomcom. I was certainly not intending to and am pretty sure I didn't. It's all about that protracted context. That's more than simply forwarding a nomination. It's about juggling trade-offs. What I suspect does tend to get ignored in these kinds of discussions, is how the IETF is different from the places we work as a day job: In the IETF the people who are in charge are not really in charge. All the approval stuff distracts from the reality that work is done by people who volunteer and those people are not hired by the decision-makers. Yeah, those decision-makers name people to particular jobs, and those jobs are important and difficult. But all of this hinges on a community constituency's deciding to work on the topic. The decision-makers come in to play only after that community constituency has developed. It is an inherently grass-roots model, quite the opposite of working for an organization.
Re: Confirming vs. second-guessing
On 2008-03-17 14:16, Ralph Droms wrote: On Sun, 16 Mar 2008, Michael StJohns wrote: [...] Put another way, the Nomcom is a search committee, but the hiring authority resides in the confirming bodies. Mike - I fundamentally and strongly disagree. In my opinoin, the Nomcom is the hiring committee; the confirming body is the oversight and sanity check body. The Nomcom is selected from the IETF as a whole to select the management for the IETF, who then serve at the pleasure of the IETF as a whole. The confirming bodies do not form a hierarchical management or hiring organization; rather, they perform a final check and review of the process. To put it very slightly otherwise, the nomcom is supposed to represent the whole community in the process of appointing people - maybe it would be better named as the appointments committee. The confirming bodies are supposed to provide a check that due process has been followed and that the proposed appointees are suitable, but they are clearly doing that as guardians of the process. I believe that it's appropriate for the confirming bodies to ask for additional information if they have reason to doubt that due proces has been followed or that some of the proposed appointees are suitable. I agree that they are inside the confidentiality boundary, too, and this should be made clear to all concerned. What I don't like about http://www.iab.org/documents/docs/2003-07-23-nomcom.html is that the materials are requested a priori, as if *every* NomCom choice is suspect. I think these are questions that should only be asked if the confirming body has specific reason to query a choice. (With one exception: it is quite reasonable to request a resume or CV a priori.) Brian ___ IETF mailing list IETF@ietf.org https://www.ietf.org/mailman/listinfo/ietf
