Subject: Re: CONSENSUS: should there be term limits?

From: Theodore Tso <[email-masked]>
Date: Mon, 01 Apr 2002 09:06:28 -0500

On Thu, Mar 28, 2002 at 09:30:00AM -0800, Randy Bush wrote:
> 
> from 2727 2(1)
> 
>    (1)  The principal functions of the nominating committee are to
>         review the open IESG and IAB positions and to either nominate
>         its incumbent or recruit a superior candidate.
>                                  ^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^

Ah, but what does a "superior candidate" **mean**?  I am sure we could
find some person who believes that after eight years, anybody,
including a Siberian Husky, might be considered a "superior
candidate".

You're confident you know what a "superior candidate" means.  Sure.
But does your definition match up with other people?  This is why I
believe having some rough guidelines which represent the sense of the
community is a good thing.  Of course, nomcom will can always ignore
these guidelines, and there will always be situations which we can't
plan for.  So ultimately, we have to trust in the good faith and wise
judgement of the voting nomcom members.  

That being said, I strongly believe that having an public discussion
about criteria which is open to the entire community about criteria is
better than having a closed discussion amongst a subset of a
self-selected sample of the community.  Maybe we need to have a public
discussion over the criteria that we should use to select our leaders
more often --- say, every three years or so; if so, maybe that should
be in the process.

Going back to the original topic, though, if the sense of the
community is that tradeoffs surrounding term limits are a bad thing,
then let's say so, explicitly.

					- Ted

---

From: Brian E Carpenter <[email-masked]>
Date: Wed, 03 Apr 2002 15:44:42 +0200

My thinking is that we do probably need to add some guidance text while
leaving the current text unchanged. A strawman that says what I feel:

  Guidelines on turnover: While rigidly defined term limits would have
  the undesirable consequence of ejecting incumbents even when no
  superior candidate was available, it is in the interest of the
  IETF to have a balance between turnover and continuity in both the 
  IAB and the IESG. The nominating committee should strive to achieve
  such a balance rather than emphasising either turnover or continuity.

Comment: yes this leaves things up to the judgement of NomCom. I think
that's the right thing to do.

   Brian

Theodore Tso wrote:
> ----------------------------------------------------------------
> To subscribe or unsubscribe from this elist use the subscription
> manager: <http://lists.elistx.com/subscribe>

-- 
- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -
Brian E Carpenter 
Distinguished Engineer, Internet Standards & Technology, IBM 
On assignment at the IBM Zurich Laboratory, Switzerland
Board Chairman, Internet Society http://www.isoc.org
INET 2002, Washington, DC, 18-21 June http://www.inet2002.org

---

From: todd glassey <[email-masked]>
Date: Thu, 11 Apr 2002 08:25:49 -0700

Comment at bottom -
----- Original Message -----
From: "Robert Elz" <[email-masked]>
To: "James M Galvin" <[email-masked]>
Cc: <[email-masked]>; <[email-masked]>
Sent: Tuesday, March 19, 2002 4:03 AM
Subject: Re: CONSENSUS: should there be term limits?

>     Date:        Sun, 17 Mar 2002 17:00:43 -0500 (Eastern Standard Time)
>     From:        James M Galvin <[email-masked]>
>     Message-ID:
<[email-masked]>
>
>   | I believe the consensus for the question of whether or not there
should
>   | be term limits is:
>   |
>   |     there should not be term limits.
>
>   | This discussion is closed.
>   |
>   | If you disagree with the determined consensus please reply to this
>   | message on the list.
>
> I think you have leapt to the conclusion that will eventually be
> reached (and which I happen to agree with), but I think you leapt
> far too quickly.
>
> Deciding consensus on the basis of less than 3 days discussion
> (your original message with the Subject was Thu Mar 14, 21:27 -0500,
> your "consensus reached" was Sun Mar 17, 17:00 -0500) is just way
> too quick, in any circumstances.
>
> When those three days are the three days immediately preceding an IETF
> meeting (and 2 of them are a weekend), when many people could be expected
> to be travelling, this leaping is really just too much.
>
> If this process is every going to achieve anything that anyone would
> even consider as half way reasonable, it needs to at least pretend to
> observe some kind of open discussion.
>
> kre

Its also proof of the problem.