Subject: Unstated assumptions

From: "Joel M. Halpern" <[email-masked]>
Date: Sun, 14 Jul 2002 23:40:58 -0400

In talking with folks about this work, I have come to see a couple of 
unstated assumptions that different people have.  (Some of these may be 
more than assumptions.)
Some of these assumptions, if examined, give rise to some potentially 
interesting questions.

First, I believe that most folks take as given that the nominating 
committees have (and are likely to continue to) worked VERY hard, and done 
what they perceive as best.
For some people, these is not equivalent to saying that the nomcom will do 
what is best for the community, or is trusted to do so.
For man more people there is a related problem of visibility.  By design, 
the nomcom keeps everything it learns, things, says, and does 
private.  This is how we have (up till now) decided it should be.
However, these leaves many people with a sense of disconnection from, and 
frequently distrust of, the current process and its results.

We do not want to get into elections and campaigning. THe proposal to make 
names available earlier in the process (some set of names) is an effort to 
enab le folks to have some visibility and participation without disrupting 
the nomcom nor significantly increasing its work load.

Two aspects of this lack of visibility come to mind without regard to the 
specific question of making names available.
One aspect is that some folks have asked "what problem are we 
fixing".  That is a reasonable question.  However, it is harder to answer 
than one would like.  Because most of us do not have visibility to the 
internals of the nomcom process, it is actually impossible to tell the 
difference among:
1) A good result, arrived at by good methods
2) A good result in sp[ite of "bad" methods / approaches / premises / ...
3) A "bad" result arrived at from "good" premisies / approaches / ...
4) A "bad" result from actual problems with the process
In fact, for most of us, there is no way to tell if a disaster (if one were 
to occur) was caused by the current process, or occurred in spite of the 
process.

The second aspect relates to the discussion of gaming the system.  There 
appears to be some disagreement about the likelihood and likely magnitude / 
impact of folks gaming the system.  From what I can gather in conversation, 
one important source of this agreement has to do with the degree of 
knowledge (which I lack) about what if an gaming has taken place under the 
current approach.

I would guess that at least some of the overall perception of problems is 
caused by an  absence of trust (by some parts of the community) of a 
process in which they have both no visibility and no participation.

Yours,
Joel M. Halpern