Subject: A proposal for publishing nominee names

From: Harald Alvestrand <[email-masked]>
Date: Wed, 10 Jul 2002 22:10:50 +0200

This is being offered as a strawman concrete proposal on the issue of 
publishing a list of nominees or candidates from the nomcom deliberations.
It is not the position of anyone but myself at this point.

The mailing list has gone around and around on this issue, with the latest 
round ending with me making roughly the same proposal, and no rough 
consensus for making the change apparent.

I'd like to verify the consensus for *or* against this proposal in 
Yokohama; if there is no strong support, I'm happy to see the topic 
disappear.

                                Harald

-------------------------------------------------------------
I suggest the following bullet to be inserted into 
draft-ietf-nomcom-rfc2727bis-01.txt, between bullets 8 and 9 of section 5:

  8. The names of all nominees that are suggested to the nomcom, and the
     positions for which they are nominated, are made
     public through a mechanism of the nomcom's choice.
     The list may include an indication that a nominee has asked not to be
     considered for a particular position.
     The list will be updated as more nominations come to the nomcom,
     on approximately a weekly basis.

The later paragraphs should be renumbered accordingly.

The following should be added to the oral tradition (Appendix A):

   Experience has shown that the nomcom process will usually reveal to a
   lot of people what nominees are being considered.
   It has also shown that some people will invariably comment that they
   did not know a person was a candidate, and therefore did not say anything
   to the nomcom of this particular person.
   In order to maximize relevant feedback to the nomcom, the names of
   nominees are made public.

   On the other hand, experience has shown that the process of getting to
   the right candidate can be complex and involve confidential information.
   In order to not reveal the evaluations of the nomcom, what is published
   should be a function of information generated outside the nomcom.
   An unedited list of names that have been nominated seems like a good
   choice.

   When a name occurs to the nomcom, it is probably conductive to
   calm deliberation to wait at least a week before making a final
   decision to nominate that candidate; having the name be public for
   a week before forwarding to confirming bodies should therefore not
   delay the process significantly.

Rationale for some items that may not be obvious:

One could have removed names from the list that are clearly not worth 
considering.
In some cases this is simple; in other cases it will not be.
Deciding which names to remove would reveal the Nomcom's thought process.

One could have removed names from the list if they asked not to be 
considered.
This might lead to the same person being renominated many times, which is 
useless.
Keeping the name on the list with a marker shows the community that if they 
want this person in that role, they will have to convince the person before 
spending time on convincing the nomcom to consider him.

One could have included the name of the nominator as well as the nominee; 
however, that would be noninformative in the case of a popular person 
nominated by many.
If publishing all the nominations, the nomination process runs the risk of 
mimicking a "popularity contest".

The proposal makes no difference between nominations generated by nomcom 
and nominations generated externally. That is intentional.

---

From: Theodore Ts'o <[email-masked]>
Date: Thu, 11 Jul 2002 00:18:36 -0400

> Yokohama; if there is no strong support, I'm happy to see the topic 

Unfortunately, I'm not going to be able to make it to Yokohama, but I
would like to register my support for such a proposal.  

I'm aware that some people are concerned about the prospect of having
their names made public.  On the other hand, if the list is as broad
as possible (i.e., all people who have been suggested to nomcom), I
believe this mitigates this concern, since no one will know whether
someone was self-nominated, nominated by a friend, nominated by a
loon, or nominated by the nomcom.

Also, if nomcom solicits input from working group chairs and other
significant area participants, the number of people that see a
"blinded list" (which consists of the people who nomcom is actively
considering, plus some other names) is so made known to so many people
that it might as well be made public anyway --- and that list isn't
that different from the list of all people who have ever been
suggested to that particular nomcom for that particular position.

						- Ted

---

From: Robert Elz <[email-masked]>
Date: Thu, 11 Jul 2002 12:40:01 +0700

Date:        Wed, 10 Jul 2002 22:10:50 +0200
    From:        Harald Alvestrand <[email-masked]>
    Message-ID:  <[email-masked]>

  | This is being offered as a strawman concrete proposal on the issue of 
  | publishing a list of nominees or candidates from the nomcom deliberations.
  | It is not the position of anyone but myself at this point.

This is the best of the proposals like this I have seen - however the
effect of it would be that someone will simply nominate everyone who
has ever attended an IETF meeting, or written an I-D, or published an
RFC, or who's name they can dredge up from almost anywhere.   I can
easily see the nomcom getting 3 or 4 thousand nominations...

The point of course would be to make the publishing of the list of
nominations completely worthless (unless you were to also add the
number of times a person was nominated, and then you have come very
close to inventing a voting system - which has never been what we
have wanted).

The effect however would be that now the nomcom would have to go through
that long list of nominations, and process every one of them.

kre

---

From: Harald Alvestrand <[email-masked]>
Date: Thu, 11 Jul 2002 08:34:34 +0200

--On torsdag, juli 11, 2002 12:40:01 +0700 Robert Elz <[email-masked]> 
wrote:

>   | publishing a list of nominees or candidates from the nomcom
> deliberations.   | It is not the position of anyone but myself at this
> point.
>
> nominations completely worthless

hmm....

this theory depends either on someone acting with active ill will towards 
the IETF, or on someone thinking that having a meaningless list published 
is better than having a somewhat meaningful list published, despite the 
cost that the method would have to the IETF.
If this rule is adopted, it will have rough consensus in the WG, and the 
resulting document will have rough consensus in the IETF. So it would seem 
to be a case of a "conscientous objector".

If someone bore ill will towards the IETF, I think there would be other 
ways to sabotage the process (too many come easily to mind to enumerate 
here).

So we're left with the case of the conscientous objector, who is willing to 
act against the IETF consensus....how big do you think the risk is?

                           Harald

---

From: avri <[email-masked]>
Date: Thu, 11 Jul 2002 08:51:28 +0200

speaking personally,

If this were a protocol we were talking about then we
would not be so blythe about leaving holes for malicious,
or conscinetious objector, action.

In the Nomcom process we are trying to define a structure
that will work better then the process we now have.  Given
a large number of ways in which the publication of the names
can be misused, I ask, is the positive value of making this
change worth the posssible risk.

I personally don't think so.

a.

Harald Alvestrand wrote:

> 
> 
> --On torsdag, juli 11, 2002 12:40:01 +0700 Robert Elz 
> <[email-masked]> wrote:
> 
> this theory depends either on someone acting with active ill will 
> towards the IETF, or on someone thinking that having a meaningless list 
> published is better than having a somewhat meaningful list published, 
> despite the cost that the method would have to the IETF.
> resulting document will have rough consensus in the IETF. So it would 
> seem to be a case of a "conscientous objector".
> 
> So we're left with the case of the conscientous objector, who is willing 
> to act against the IETF consensus....how big do you think the risk is?
> 
>                           Harald
> 
> 
> ----------------------------------------------------------------
> To subscribe or unsubscribe from this elist use the subscription
> manager: <http://lists.elistx.com/subscribe>
>

---

From: Robert Elz <[email-masked]>
Date: Thu, 11 Jul 2002 14:03:43 +0700

Date:        Thu, 11 Jul 2002 08:34:34 +0200
    From:        Harald Alvestrand <[email-masked]>
    Message-ID:  <[email-masked]>

  | So we're left with the case of the conscientous objector, who is willing to 
  | act against the IETF consensus....how big do you think the risk is?

Big enough - but the effect on the IETF probably wouldn't be that
great, I have little doubt but that a nomcom in that position would
quickly be able to conclude that if person X nominated several hundred
people for the position of IETF chair, then they weren't really serious
about any of them, and simply ignore all nominations from X.

So, as sabotage it wouldn't have much effect really - but it would
certainly make the process of publishing the (unedited) list completely
pointless.

If this were a technical proposal, rather than a political one, and an
equivalently trivial method to defeat its purpose was shown, we wouldn't
consider it again until a method to avoid the problem was discovered.
We certainly wouldn't be attempting to rely upon "good boys wouldn't
do that"...

kre

---

From: Brian E Carpenter <[email-masked]>
Date: Thu, 11 Jul 2002 10:50:39 +0200

Having originally raised the suggestion of publishing names,
I agree that this approach is the least bad way of doing it,
but with the extra time that is now proposed to be added to the
process, I no longer feel that publication is essential.

We could always try doing it for one year, with no commitment
for future years.

   Brian

---

From: Dave Crocker <[email-masked]>
Date: Sat, 13 Jul 2002 13:22:56 +0900

>     public through a mechanism of the nomcom's choice.

This proposal has the strong appeal of simplicity to it.  It also carries a 
complexity of implications.  Worse, it is not clear what benefit derives 
from this or whether there are more efficient ways of achieving those benefits.

To stay with simplicity, while trying to pursue what I believe is 
underlying kre's concerns:

         Publishing all the names at the beginning of the process invites 
all sorts of gaming.

We like to think the IETF is free of such stuff, but the games can get 
pretty sophisticated, and we would do well not to pretend that they will 
not occur here.  Stuffing the candidate olist is one game.  Lobbying by 
candidates is another.  Seeking to poison the feedback is another.  And so 
on.

What is the purpose of publishing the names?  It is to ensure that the 
general IETF has a chance to provide feedback about a candidate's 
qualifications.

Does the nomcom need more information about all candidates?  I think 
not.  That is, are there people who should be in the final selection who do 
not make it that far, when less qualified candidates are retained?  I doubt 
it.  Or, at least, I think it unlikely that such choices are from lack of 
information.

The detail that IS sometimes lacking is for making fine-grained 
choices.  For this, all the available information is needed.

         If we publish the list of those making the final cut, rather
         than all names at the beginning, there is plenty of time for
         the community to offer comments, but far less opportunity for
         gaming.

There also will be a smaller amount of community feedback, thereby reducing 
the load on the nomcom, which is already pretty stressed.

d/

d/

---

From: John C Klensin <[email-masked]>
Date: Sat, 13 Jul 2002 16:51:26 -0400

--On Saturday, 13 July, 2002 13:22 +0900 Dave Crocker
<[email-masked]> wrote:

>...
> We like to think the IETF is free of such stuff, but the games
> can get pretty sophisticated, and we would do well not to
> pretend that they will not occur here.  Stuffing the candidate
> olist is one game.  Lobbying by candidates is another.  Seeking
> to poison the feedback is another.  And so on.

<sarcasm>
Of course, none of these things have ever occurred, nor could
they occur, under the current Nomcom rules and the fantasy that,
by not publishing a list of names, names are unknown to the
community.  No one has ever been proposed to the Nomcom either to
make someone else seem stronger or because it seemed desirable to
have more than one candidate for a given position even if the
second one was clearly inferior.  No one has ever organized
efforts to give the nomcom a particular picture (good or bad) of
particular candidates. Such things would be inconceivable in the
IETF.

And pigs fly
</sarcasm>

I don't know whether publishing names, under Harald's proposal or
otherwise, is a good idea, nor am I convinced about the merits of
early versus late publication, but it doesn't seem to me that
these particular types of potential abuse are an argument either
for or against it.

     john

---

From: Harald Tveit Alvestrand <[email-masked]>
Date: Sun, 14 Jul 2002 06:18:58 +0900

> Publishing all the names at the beginning of the process invites

note: I don't propose publishing all the names at the beginning of the 
process, but *all the names that have been suggested, throughout the 
process*.

> What is the purpose of publishing the names?  It is to ensure that
> the general IETF has a chance to provide feedback about a
> candidate's
> qualifications.

I think this is too simple-minded.

The scenarios where having the list be public may help the nomcom process 
include:

- "how could you think of that guy? He's impossible!" (feedback)
- "of course, now that you mention it, he would be great - I'd never have 
thought of him, but now it's obvious" (feedback)
- "how come nobody nominated <name>?" (more nominations)

That is, not only the qualifications of the individual candidates, but the 
visibility of the pool of nominated candidates is an important result of 
the publication.

WRT gaming:

When faced with gaming attempts in other contexts, my advice has almost 
invariably been to expose the actions to public view.
With an informed and fair-minded populace, that will lead to the attempted 
manipulators getting egg on their face.
(Without that populace, we're up the creek anyway.)

But in the case of nomcom, gaming can go undetected or be impossible to 
expose in this way - BECAUSE of the confidentiality rules.

If the publication of names makes some kinds of gaming visibile to the IETF 
community, I think we've gained something, not lost it.

                     Harald

---

From: Dave Crocker <[email-masked]>
Date: Sun, 14 Jul 2002 07:20:14 +0900

><sarcasm>

Since the point of my previous note seems to have been missed, let's try 
backing into this more pedagogically:

1.      The IETF has had a long-standing policy of maintaining intense 
privacy about the names of candidates.  The current proposal is therefore a 
replacement of a well-established -- and reasonably successful -- paradigm, 
with one that is fundamentally opposite.  Folks in the IETF know something 
about the risks involved with paradigm changes.

         Public nomination lists are quite common in the world; however 
many things are common in the world that the IETF has explicitly chosen NOT 
to adopted.  In other words, we have our own perspectives and styles of 
doing process.  The track record for the success of our model is marked, so 
we should try to maintain the foundation for it, as much as possibly.

         Blithely replacing a key component to the paradigm we have used 
for choosing our managers is simply not prudent.  A claim that we can "try 
it once" and then see how it goes is like saying that we should try to use 
LDAP instead of DNS, for awhile, and see how it goes.  We need to adopt 
changes based on a reasonably careful consideration of benefits, risks, and 
adoption process.  None of that is really happening here.

         This community is extremely expert at making technical changes, 
and yet we are always very careful about making changes to the Internet's 
technical infrastructure.  This community is very much NOT exert at making 
changes to social processes, so we need to be even more careful about 
making changes to the IETF's management processes, not less careful.

         Let's try to make the smallest change to our selection paradigm we 
can and let's be very clear about the problem that change is intended to solve.

2.      The proposal for this new paradigm introduces the change at the 
point of maximum scaling impact.  Folks in the IETF know something about 
scaling risks.

         As I said, "we like to think that we are free from such 
stuff."  That's different than saying that we ARE free from it.  To the 
extent that we are willing to be pragmatic and acknowledge that we live in 
the real world of people who have a variety of motives and styles, then we 
should factor such concerns into the design of our social processes, 
especially a social process that chooses our managers.

         Frankly, the change being proposed invites a substantial amount of 
public discussion, debate, abuse, and the like, for the entire duration of 
the nomcom process.  That's not just my opinion.  There is a fair amount of 
research on this sort of gaming and anyone trained in the topic will make 
the same comment about it.  They will also note that early vs. late 
disclosure is likely to make a significant difference in the nature and 
degree of that gaming.  We would do well to worry about making a change 
which affects the scaling of such gaming opportunities.

3.      The proposed change is being made without a clear sense of the 
benefit being sought, or real consideration of the likelihood that benefit 
will accrue.

         (To repeat, I think that some disclosure of names will permit a 
increase in community feedback and that this is likely to provide better 
insight into serious candidates. I doubt it will have any positive effect 
for evaluating basic candidate qualifications and it will definitely 
increase the load on nomcom members.)

         There also has there been no consideration of possible negative 
effects of the proposed disclosure.  Folks in the IETF know that changes to 
systems almost always carry unintended and negative consequences, so we 
would be wise not to ignore the probability.  The effects of changes to 
social processes are far more difficult to predict than changes to 
technical systems; we should therefore approach such changes with more 
caution, not less.

         My previous note suggested the alternative of publishing the names 
only of those making the final evaluation cut, rather than of all those 
initially nominated.  I gave reasons for that alternative suggestion

         Assuming that anyone has interest in serious consideration of 
needs, effects and alternatives, I'd suggest considering the trade-offs of 
such choices, rather than indulging in simplistic, dismissive sarcasm.

d/

----------
Dave Crocker  <mailto:[email-masked]>
Brandenburg InternetWorking  <http://www.brandenburg.com>
tel +1.408.246.8253;  fax +1.408.850.1850

---

From: "Joel M. Halpern" <[email-masked]>
Date: Sun, 14 Jul 2002 02:00:23 -0400

In my opinion there are two closely related problems that you seem to be 
ignoring in your evaluation:

1) The community is almost completely cut off from the selection process by 
the need for confidentiality.  This creates some odd perceptions on peoples 
part as to what is going on.  Getting some information out, and thereby 
provide a way for the community to provide at least vaguely relevant input 
ought to help this sense of disconnection.

2) More importantly, as an outside IETF participant there have been 
selections in the past where it appeared likely that the nomcom did not 
receive as much feedback about certain candidates as would have been 
helpful.  Since I do not want to expose to much of the nomcom's 
deliberations, come mechanism to at least give people a clue as to what 
feedback might be relevant without too stringent a filter would seem a 
reasonable compromise.

Yours,
Joel M. Halpern

At 01:22 PM 7/13/2002 +0900, Dave Crocker wrote:
>This proposal has the strong appeal of simplicity to it.  It also carries 
>a complexity of implications.  Worse, it is not clear what benefit derives 
>candidates is another.  Seeking to poison the feedback is another.  And so on.
>
>not.  That is, are there people who should be in the final selection who 
>do not make it that far, when less qualified candidates are retained?  I 
>doubt it.  Or, at least, I think it unlikely that such choices are from 
>lack of information.
>
>There also will be a smaller amount of community feedback, thereby 
>reducing the load on the nomcom, which is already pretty stressed.
>
>d/
>
>d/
>
>

---

From: Theodore Ts'o <[email-masked]>
Date: Sun, 14 Jul 2002 15:22:04 -0400

> community, I think we've gained something, not lost it.

Something else to consider is that as long as nomcom as a certain
amount of discretion (which we can give them, since if we can't trust
the nomcom, the process is sunk anyway), the gaming problem can also
be addressed by allowing the nomcom decide that someone who has
flooded the nomcom with thousands of names can be safely ignored, thus
(a) saving the nomcom from having to ask everyone if they want to be
considered, and (b) those names would therefore not have to appear on
the list.

Preventing denial of service attacks is hard in protocols because
computers don't have the judgement that humans about deciding when
they are under a DOS attack.  But humans can easily decide that if
they are getting bombed with suggestions, even if they are coming from
different sources, that a DOS attack is taking place, and as long as
we give the the appropriate amounts of discretion, we can trust them
to take appropriate action --- possibly up to and including making the
public that someone has attempted to game the system by flooding the
nomcom with all possible IETF members as suggestions, for example.

So Dave's argument that the system can be gamed in this particular
argument is at best just a reminder that we need to give the nomcom
appropriate amounts discretion, and at worst, completely specious,
since I don't believe the problem is would be something that we would
really need to worry about in real life.

						- Ted

---

From: Robert Elz <[email-masked]>
Date: Mon, 15 Jul 2002 11:09:02 +0900

Date:        Sun, 14 Jul 2002 15:22:04 -0400
    From:        "Theodore Ts'o" <[email-masked]>
    Message-ID:  <[email-masked]>

  | the gaming problem can also
  | be addressed by allowing the nomcom decide that someone who has
  | flooded the nomcom with thousands of names can be safely ignored, thus
  | (a) saving the nomcom from having to ask everyone if they want to be
  | considered, and (b) those names would therefore not have to appear on
  | the list.

(a) yes, certainly, but on (b), part of the simplicity and what made
Harald's suggestion better than most of the earlier ones, was that it
was totally algorithmic, and revealed nothing of what the nomcom was
actually doing.    Once the nomcom starts editing the list, for any
reason, a lot of this gets lost.

  | possibly up to and including making the
  | public that someone has attempted to game the system by flooding the
  | nomcom with all possible IETF members as suggestions, for example.

If it is a straight DoS attack, then yes - but the same issue with a
flood of names can also occur just because everyone wonders why X isn't
on the list, for their favourite X, and suggests them.

Aside: I was half way through this reply when the nomcom meeting
started (then suspended it till now when it is over).  For those who were
not there, the result was no consensus for anything from the attendees,
and to continue the discussion on the list.

kre

---

From: Robert Elz <[email-masked]>
Date: Mon, 15 Jul 2002 13:44:34 +0900

Date:        Mon, 15 Jul 2002 11:09:02 +0900
    From:        Robert Elz <[email-masked]>
    Message-ID:  <[email-masked]>

  | Aside: I was half way through this reply when the nomcom meeting
  | started (then suspended it till now when it is over).  For those who were
  | not there, the result was no consensus for anything from the attendees,
  | and to continue the discussion on the list.

Just realised this could be ambigouos - I meant, no consensus on the
particular issue of disclosing names.   Other issues were more easily
dealt with, all that should eventually be revealed from the minutes.

kre

---

From: Brian E Carpenter <[email-masked]>
Date: Mon, 15 Jul 2002 11:05:41 +0200

> dealt with, all that should eventually be revealed from the minutes.

I suggest that we need a deadline for this continued discussion - since we
don't want it to infect this year's NomCom process with uncertainty.

And those who don't like Harald's proposal should probably make a precise
counter-proposal at this point. 

   Brian

---

From: Robert Elz <[email-masked]>
Date: Mon, 15 Jul 2002 18:45:56 +0900

Date:        Mon, 15 Jul 2002 11:05:41 +0200
    From:        Brian E Carpenter <[email-masked]>
    Message-ID:  <[email-masked]>

  | I suggest that we need a deadline for this continued discussion - since we
  | don't want it to infect this year's NomCom process with uncertainty.

There was another issue discussed, which was generally agreed in the
meeting, which perhaps I cam make a totally personal and unofficial
comment about (but I hope there won't be much disagreement)...

Avri reported on the milestones as set for the WG, and current progress.
It is clear that the milestones aren't going to be met - the hope at the
minute is that the doc might just be done [my addition, not from the
meeting: but perhaps not through the RFC editor's queue] by the time of
the next IETF meeting.   All going well.

That being the case, there was the question of what should be done for this
year's nomcom, which should be well underway by then.  There seemed to be
3 options.
1. tell the coming nomcom to use the I-D, whatever its state or status
2. try very hard to get this doc published, even if incomplete, before
it is too late for this year [Aside again: would almost mean publish
what now exists]
3. this year's nomcom ignores this doc, and it applies first to next year's.

Where this matters most in the very near term is wrt the timelines.

As I understood the general sense of the room (in that no-one objected,
I believe) the approach was to be to tell the nomcom to follow this I-D
to the extent it is not inconsistent with the current RFC.

That is, where it provides clarification etc.   And it is (was) believed
that the timelines would be one of those issues - that the ones in the
draft should be used, and they wouldn't be inconsistent with rfc2727.

And now to extrapolate a little, since the issue wasn't discussed, I'd
assume that revealing lists of names would be inconsistent with 2727, and
so unless this doc is published (or at the least, approved) before the
issue arises, no name publishing would happen this year, whatever is
decided for this doc.

  | And those who don't like Harald's proposal should probably make a precise
  | counter-proposal at this point. 

The question was asked as to who supports no revealing of names, and
who supports some kind of list being published, details to be worked
out later.   That one produced no clear result.

With that, the counter proposal is obviously "change nothing", leave the
names confidential.  That's a simple one to make precisely.

I'll make a side comment here on how the questions for this can/should be
asked, and what effects that can have on the outcomes.

Some (perhaps even more than just a few) might know that Australia
went through a process of deciding if it wanted to become a republic
or not (as opposed to remaining a part of the British Monarchy).

Opinion polls clearly showed that most Australians were in favour of
the change.   But then there were two ways this could be done - one
was to have an appointed president, much as Australia currently has
an appointed Governor General (the practical head of state, as the
Queen's representative in Australia) - and as I believe is done in
Eire, or whether it should be an elected head of state (as in the US,
France, Russia - though it would be without all the electoral weirdness
of those systems, and for a person with almost no actual power, a
figurehead position).   Of those who supported becoming a republic,
the majority supported the latter position (though I think not by a lot).

By carefully asking the right questions down the line, Australia is still
not a republic.   That is, at a convention, with no actual powers, ask
if we want a republic.  Answer: yes.  Which kind?  Here the monarchsists
support those for an appointed president, and together, they're the
majority, so that's the model adopted.   Then that question goes in a
referendum to the people - here the monarchists and the people who want
to elect the president together vote down the appointed president model.
Hence, "no" is the answer, and no republic.

The republicans, no big surprise, really wanted a binding question of
"Do we want to be a republic" asked, which probably would have resulted
in a "yes" answer, and then there would have been another vote on
the model, with the "appointed president" winning on a combination of
the 2 groups who wanted anything but an elected president.

Either way, the most popular individual model - the elected president,
doesn't happen.

The point of that story is that here in this WG much the same state
exists.   We can have no change, or we can announce lists of names
with one set of rules or another (the one difference here is that there
isn't a clear mandate in favour of some form of list being made public).

Unless we know all the proposals, and consider them together, with no
side questions binding us along the way, we can be maneuvered in a
similar way (as both groups in Aust were attempting) to get a result
that is really only supported by a minority (and not even the biggest
minority support - probably the smallest).

kre