Subject: Re: WG Review: Operation of the IESG/IAB Nominating and Recall Committees (nomcom)

From: Dave Crocker <[email-masked]>
Date: Fri, 12 Apr 2002 08:18:28 -0700

At 02:38 PM 4/11/2002 -0400, Steve Coya wrote:
>This working group will consider all such clarifications and
>suggestions and produce a revision to RFC2727. ... It is only concerned 
>with the details of the current
>process.

This might be the first time a proposed charter has said so little about 
the problem(s) to be solved.

It is difficult to imagine a charter that is this generic being approved by 
the IESG for any technical work.  The tail-line that attempts to provide a 
constraint on the scope is equally generic and, therefore, unlikely to be 
useful for managing the effort.

I'd offer alternative text but do not know what specific work is 
intended.  Galvin's draft revision does not provide insight about the 
motivations for the proposed changes.  Again, we do not know what problems 
are being solved.

Unless it is now acceptable to have charters that say "work in this general 
area and do good things", then we really need to see something that at 
least describes the problems to be worked on, with more specificity than 
the cryptic phrase "details of the current process".

I strongly urge that chartering be deferred until there is public 
discussion and rough consensus on the details of the nomcom process to be 
considered.  We have all seen how difficult it is to manage discussions 
about the nomcom process, so a precise charter is even more important for 
this effort than for a typical IETF working group.

d/

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Dave Crocker <mailto:[email-masked]>
TribalWise, Inc. <http://www.tribalwise.com>
tel +1.408.246.8253; fax +1.408.850.1850

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From: Keith Moore <[email-masked]>
Date: Fri, 12 Apr 2002 15:36:30 -0400

> the problem(s) to be solved.

not the first time, I fear.  but I had a similar reaction to yours.
nor does the "input document" shed much light

is a concrete list of questions for the group to consider too much to ask?

Keith