Subject: guidance on avoiding too many people from one company/group

From: avri doria <[email-masked]>
Date: Sun, 10 Nov 2002 12:33:18 +0100

After this year's selection was made, the issue resurfaced
of whether there should be a rule, or guidance,
relating to the number of Nomcom volunteers from a single
company or group.

Aspects of the issue:

- While the policy of the IETF is that individuals participate
   as individuals and not representatives of their companies,
   it is also accepted that in practice, many participants do
   represent their employer's viewpoints.

- Too many participants from one company could prejudice the
   decision of the nomcom in favor of a particular set of
   choices.

- Too many participants from one company could prejudice the
   decisions away from a good candidate in order to avoid the
   appearance of prejudice.

- If we do something to consider companies as participants in
   this instance, the IETF may need to do something about it
   in a broader sense.

-- However, since the nomcom process is not an open process,
    the normal safeguards against collaboration may not operate.
    a limit of 2 individuals from one company should be put into
    the rules.

--- While not an open process, it is a scrutinized process. This
     should be enough to keep it honest.

--- If the issue is collaboration and control of a single group,
     should we also consider limitations such as coming from a
     single country, e.g. the US.

--- Perhaps it should be 2 from any single organization, with the
     Nomcom chair defining what an organization is.

--- Perhaps it should be just 1 individual from an organization

--- Changes in affiliation after the Nomcom is formed should not be
     taken into account.  I.e. there would be no obligation to resign
     from the nomcom if someone is hired by an organization who
     already  has a sitting member.

--- Volunteers should declare their primary company affiliation.
     The limitation applies to a company and not to companies owned
     by the company.  I.e. if company A owns company B, it would be
     permissible for 2 participants to come from A and 2 from B.
     Presumably contractors would not be affected by a rule.

And an issue that came up in conversations not on the list, though
referred to on the list:

-- Instead of a rule should it be guidance that organizations
    voluntarily limit their participation to a maximum number.
    This would involve a recommendation that volunteers resign
    if too many are selected form their organization.
-- Should the rule eliminate selectees who are selected after the
    organization maximum is reached
-- Should the rule allow the those chosen to choose which of the
    multiple organization selectee resigns.

-- 
Avri Doria
http://www.sm.luth.se/~avri/

---

From: Dave Crocker <[email-masked]>
Date: Sun, 10 Nov 2002 09:28:54 -0800

Avri,

Nice summary.

Nomcom differs from working group processes in two ways: its deliberations
are closed and the damage likely from reversing the results of those
deliberations is very high. This prompts us to look for ways to make
reversal very, very unlikely. Hence, the nomcom processes need to have more
"surface" objectivity than the usual, open, lengthy incremental IETF
processes.

We rely on the diversity achieve this. That is, we rely on random sampling
to produce a group from sufficiently diverse backgrounds, affiliations,
locations, etc. This will ensure a sufficiently diverse range of agendas and
perspectives. (We are not simply worried about conscious and manipulative
agendas. We are also worried that the group be able to consider things
broadly. Commonality of a characteristic -- like company affiliation --
makes it more likely that people will see and analyze things in a similar
fashion. For a nomcom, this would be problematic.

Unfortunately the selection process must rely on a rather small
"population", namely folks who self-select to offer to participate. (The
pool of candidate nomcom participants is inherently biased, because it is
self-selected and because even as many as 100 volunteers makes for
statistically problematic pool.) So it is not suprising that -- as we have
seen -- the resulting group of nomcom participants is not random enough to
ensure community comfort.

The special nature of nomcom requires that we be proactive and prevent
statistical anomalies, such as too many from the same company.

We need to consider 3 things:

1.  What are the list of attributes that we need to worry about?

    Company affiliation is the one that has surfaced. Are there others?

    Would we be concerned if 8 nomcom members were from Malaysia, or from
    the UK, or from China or from the US? What about having 8 being from
    what, in the US, is called a "protected minority"? What about 8 being
    mathematicians, or being psychologists? (Don't laugh. There are more of
    the latter in the IETF than folks realize. As one of them, I am sure
    that we should worry about it...) What if 8 had never been an editor,
    working group chair, AD or IAB member -- ie, what if we had essentially
    no voting member of nomcom with any real hands-on experience dealing
    with the management process?

2.  What can we do to make randomization better, in terms of the pool that
    members are drawn from and in terms of the mechanism for drawing from
    that pool?

3.  What should be the hard limits, in case the randomization does not work?

Here are my own suggestions, just to offer a starting point for discussion:

1.  Attributes of concern

    Company
    Geography
    IETF management experience.

2.  Randomization

    Use limits to protect against too many from company or geography. Make
    separate selection pools from based on experience.

    Draw from the "experienced" pool first, up to 50% of the nomcom. Fold
    the remainder of that pool into the second, pool and select the
    remaining 50%.

3.  No more than 3 from the same company.

    Use a standard table of geographic region and limit participation to no
    more than 50% from a single region.

d/

ps. This topic quickly gets distasteful. There are some attributes we would
not want to acknowledge are a concern, even if he concern is valid. As a
counterbalance, against this discomfort, we really do need to ask how the
community will feel if nomcom has a very large number of participants with
one of these "interesting" attributes. If the community would be worried
when 8 out of the 10 voting nomcom members had a particular attribute in
common, then we MUST find a way to mitigate against its occurrence.

Sunday, November 10, 2002, 3:33:18 AM, you wrote:
avri> - While the policy of the IETF is that individuals participate
avri>    as individuals and not representatives of their companies,
avri>    it is also accepted that in practice, many participants do
avri>    represent their employer's viewpoints.
...
avri> - If we do something to consider companies as participants in
avri>    this instance, the IETF may need to do something about it
avri>    in a broader sense.
...
avri> -- However, since the nomcom process is not an open process,
avri>     the normal safeguards against collaboration may not operate.

d/
-- 
 Dave Crocker  <mailto:[email-masked]>
 TribalWise <http://www.tribalwise.com>
 t +1.408.246.8253; f +1.408.850.1850

---

From: Scott W Brim <[email-masked]>
Date: Sun, 10 Nov 2002 15:46:26 -0500

Regarding limits on members per institution ... it looks to me like KRE
laid out pretty good reasoning, and at least Brian Carpenter, Steve
Silverman, Donald Eastlake, Harald and I came in for 2 per institution
as well.  Loa raised some good concerns which I think were answered.  As
far as I can tell no new ideas were brought up after the "rough"
consensus on 2 per institution.  We didn't settle on what to do with odd
cases, like different divisions of a large company.  I suggested giving
the NomCom Chair discretion to sort that out.  We can work that out, but
I think we have agreement on "2 per institution".

Dave Crocker also suggests geography and experience as criteria, in
order to drive diversity when selecting from a small pool.  I would like
to to leave them alone for now.

Experience is obviously valuable, but we do have the non-voting members
contributing their experience, and I wonder how much of a problem it is.
Have we had problems with lack of experience before this year, that
non-voting members and advisers haven't covered?  Having a quota for
experienced people means less space for new people with good ideas.  Is
there a net win here?

Geography: Personally I wouldn't mind a nomcom made up entirely of
Japanese, or Canadians, or Ghanaians, or women.  We might learn a few
things.  I understand the feeling some participants have that the IETF
is too dominated by the USA -- because it is -- but that is an artifact
which I expect to change, and I see very little evidence that
it has led to IESG domination by the USA anyway.  So again, the problem
is how
much net benefit there is.  Geography is a difficult area.  Are you
going to give Eritrea a seat?  Just think about all the conflict you're
going to generate while trying to promote geographic diversity.  How
about political viewpoints, and others?  Those would seem to be more
threatening than geographic viewpoint.  This whole area of ensuring
diversity of viewpoints is sensitive and can get pretty messy.  I think
we'll need a lot more discussion, and that we shouldn't push for
resolution for quite a while.

...Scott

---

From: Eric Rescorla <[email-masked]>
Date: Sun, 10 Nov 2002 13:23:17 -0800

> ensure community comfort.
Dave,

As you know, it's very hard to draw these sorts of line and I think
that all of these lines are very blurry.  For example:

(1) I spent a year as a contractor working essentially for Nokia,
despite the fact that I was never an employee. Do I count as
working for Nokia?

(2) Charlie Kaufman works for Iris which is wholly owned by IBM.  For
years, his e-mail was [email-masked] and he had Iris
Associates on his business card. Does Charlie Kaufman work for Iris or
IBM? This month IBM shut down iris.com e-mail addresses. Who does
Charlie work for now?

(3) Harald Alvestrand is a European working for an American
company. Next year he will be based in the US. Is he American or
European?

(4) I've got a friend who was born in India and is obviously 
ethnically Indian but is a naturalized US citizen. Is he American
or Indian?

I've got a counter suggestion that doesn't require creating quite so
many quotas and drawing bright lines. As I see it, the problem is
primarily the small self-selected sample (as you mention
above). Obviously, any non-random sample won't represent the main
population as well as the population itself.

We'd like to completely remove the element of self-selection as the
state tries to do with jury duty. Since we can't force people to
serve, we can't eliminate it completely. However, we can substantially
reduce it.  The simple fix is to randomly select nomcom members from
the eligible pool. We don't require people to serve but
psychologically people are much more likely to serve when specifically
selected than if asked en masse to volunteer.

If there's some desire to favor volunteers we could draw part of
the nomcom from a volunteer pool as well, as you suggest.

-Ekr

--
[Eric Rescorla                                   [email-masked]]
                http://www.rtfm.com/

---

From: Donald Eastlake 3rd <[email-masked]>
Date: Mon, 11 Nov 2002 09:20:53 -0500 (EST)

On Sun, 10 Nov 2002, Dave Crocker wrote:

> Date: Sun, 10 Nov 2002 09:28:54 -0800
> From: Dave Crocker <[email-masked]>
> To: avri doria <[email-masked]>
> Cc: ietf-nomcom <[email-masked]>
> Subject: Re: guidance on avoiding too many people from one company/group
> 
> Avri,
> 
> Nice summary.
> 

I think the main problem is the appearance of fairness. Perfect fairness 
in not actually necessary in any particular year, because random 
selection of the nomcom will tend to smooth things out over time. But 
too great a deviation from the appearance of fairness in one year is 
unacceptable.

The nomcom has an exact, enumerated, publicly known membership. Because
of this and because of the effects on its decisions, it is also much
more likely that its membership will be scrutinized both within and
without the IETF.

> fashion. For a nomcom, this would be problematic.

You are waving your hands vaguely when that isn't necessary. The IETF
is, and is intended to be, a technocratic orgnaization. The problem is
that organizations, even non-profit ones, are sometimes biased
technically. So if persons beholden to one organization get more than
two votes on the nomcom, it looks like, and might actually be, that the
nomcom would be biased towards candidates who would be biased towards
that organization or to technology favored by that organization. This is
the only problem I see, not some vague necessity to be abstractly
diverse for all dimensions (an obvious impossibility).

> ensure community comfort.

When the nomcom member volunteer pool was around 40, as it was for the
first several years, this problem didn't occur. It's only recently with
the larger pool and the phenomena of, relatively speaking, huge numbers
of volunteers from the same organization that this problem has shown up.  
One possibility is to make the criterion for volunteers more stringent
to get back down to a smaller number of volunteers. This would decrease
the number from any particular organization. And frankly, if three
people from a company ended up on the nomcom but they were all well
known, decades long participants in the IETF, it would not be much of a
problem. It's when some company routinely sends 45 people to IETF
meetings most of whom are relativley unknown to the community and 15 of
them volunteer and qualify for nomcom and 3+ of those are selected that
its a problem.

>     Company affiliation is the one that has surfaced. Are there others?

It's not "company", it's organization. I don't think there are any 
others.

>     with the management process?

I just don't see much technical bias on the national level. Of course,
if you are talking government employees (which I assume you are not).  
then it would be a problemm, because they would be affiliated with the
same organization.

>     members are drawn from and in terms of the mechanism for drawing from

The randomization, if you use something like RFC 2777, is about as
random as you can get. Of course, its actualy a fairly powerful
mechanism and it would be trivial to bias it. For example, you could
make the probability of choosing volunter X be proportional to the
number of IETF meetings they have attended out of the past three plus 3
points for being a WG chair currently or within the past year plus 1
point up to a maximum of 3 for each non-obsolete standards track or BCP
RFC they have authored. You could make this as complex as you want, but
I'm not sure we need that yet or that it would be worth the endless
debates setting up the equation.

> 3.  What should be the hard limits, in case the randomization does not work?

Randomization works by being random. Thus it has a finite probability of
choosing any 10 from the list. If there is any such 10 whose selection
(say, because 3+ all work for the same company) is unacceptable and of
significant probability, then you need a hard limit. What is significant
probability? My opinion is something like 1 in 10**8 but people will
differ on this. However adopting a hard limit will set the probability
of unacceptable results, whatever the limit rule defines them to be, to
zero.

> Here are my own suggestions, just to offer a starting point for discussion:

I'm not sure we need any more discussion and I certainly don't think we
need to look for brand new areas at this time.

>     IETF management experience.

From the point of view of an technology unbiased nomcom, both in reality
and appearance, organization (company) is the only concern.

"IETF management experience" is a whole different matter we should not 
confuse with the issue at hand.

>     the remainder of that pool into the second, pool and select the

There is no need for geography limits.

If you are going to define "experienced", rather than some complex
multistage selection process, I would just use that definition to bias
the random selection as I described above.

> 3.  No more than 3 from the same company.

Three is clearly too many. I would favor a limit of one from the same
organization but a limit of 2 will fix the problem and I support that as 
the consensus.

>     more than 50% from a single region.

What standard? This is a political thicket it would be stupid to get
into since there isn't a problem here.

> common, then we MUST find a way to mitigate against its occurrence.

I don't think so. If an attribute is so mild it takes 8 out of 10 or
before anyone is concerned, it seems implausible that it is worth
worrying about at this point. If you have a nomcom pool of 100 with 10
having a characteristic, the probability of choosing 3+ with that
characteristic is about 7% (we had a pool with multiple companies having
have more than 10 candidates in the pool resulting in a substantially
higher chance that at least one company would have 3+). The probabiliyt
of choosing 4+ was 1.3%. The probability of choosing 8+ under these
circumstances is only 9*10**-9. Presumably if 80 out of the 100 had that
characteristics, then 8 should be chosen.

Actually here is the table:

0	3.49E-01
1	3.87E-01
2	1.94E-01
3	5.74E-02
4	1.12E-02
5	1.49E-03
6	1.38E-04
7	8.75E-06
8	3.65E-07
9	9.00E-09
10	1.00E-10

> avri>     the normal safeguards against collaboration may not operate.

It can be more subtle than that. N nomcom members from the same 
organizatgion probably know the same people who are likely also 
affilitated with that organization and might be biased towards picking 
or avoiding such people, to the detriment of the IETF.

> d/

Thanks,
Donald
======================================================================
 Donald E. Eastlake 3rd                       [email-masked]
 155 Beaver Street              +1-508-634-2066(h) +1-508-851-8280(w)
 Milford, MA 01757 USA                   [email-masked]

---

From: Brian E Carpenter <[email-masked]>
Date: Mon, 11 Nov 2002 14:23:46 +0100

All too complicated. The simple proposal we got to last time
around was:

-each volunteer is required to state, when volunteering, who
 his or her principal employer is;
-when making the random selection, as soon as two people stating
 the same principal employer have been picked, all others with
 that principal employer are removed from the pool.

In other words don't require judgement by the IETF about who 
the employer is, and don't waste cycles on corner cases such as
subsidiaries or changes of employer. Let's just do something simple 
and algorithmic, to avoid major gaming of the process.

   Brian

Eric Rescorla 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

---

From: Jeff Williams <[email-masked]>
Date: Mon, 11 Nov 2002 08:30:10 -0800

Brian and all,

  I must agree with Biran's conclusion here.  However the process
is still so flawed irrespective of this concern as to be a rigged game in and
of itself...

> > the nomcom from a volunteer pool as well, as you suggest.

Regards,

--
Jeffrey A. Williams
Spokesman for INEGroup - (Over 127k members/stakeholders strong!)
CEO/DIR. Internet Network Eng/SR. Java/CORBA Development Eng.
Information Network Eng. Group. INEG. INC.
E-Mail [email-masked]
Contact Number: 214-244-4827 or 972-244-3801
Address: 5 East Kirkwood Blvd. Grapevine Texas 75208

---

From: Scott W Brim <[email-masked]>
Date: Mon, 11 Nov 2002 10:07:12 -0500

On Monday, November 11, 2002 8:23 AM -0500,

> and algorithmic, to avoid major gaming of the process.

Keep the algorithm simple by leaving the corner cases to the discretion
of the NomCom chair, with accountability through sending a unicast
message to anyone rejected by this method.  "We took you off the list
because there were already two from X and your principal employer is a
wholly owned subsidiary of X."

---

From: Brian E Carpenter <[email-masked]>
Date: Mon, 11 Nov 2002 17:41:48 +0100

> wholly owned subsidiary of X."

As long as our lawyer is happy with any liability that might create, sure.

   Brian

---

From: Dave Crocker <[email-masked]>
Date: Mon, 11 Nov 2002 12:01:02 -0800

Donald,

Monday, November 11, 2002, 6:20:53 AM, you wrote:
Donald> I think the main problem is the appearance of fairness.

Appearance of fairness is only one of two concerns. The other is the
legitimate need for real diversity of perspectives. Too much "cultural"
concentration works against this need.

No matter how well intentioned individuals are, we reflect the cultures we
come from.  Companies are cultures.  So are some other associations.

Real diversity ensures that a topic is considered from significantly
different perspectives.  Nomcom deliberations absolutely rely on that
diversity.

Donald> You are waving your hands vaguely when that isn't necessary.

FWIW I meant my comments about diversity to be neither hand-waving nor
vague.  They pertain to a very basic construct in this sort of
decision-making process.

Donald>  The IETF
Donald> is, and is intended to be, a technocratic orgnaization.

Yes, but management is management, and that is a different from technology.
Nomcom is about selecting managers. It therefore needs to pay a lot of
attention to matters that are quite different from technical consideration.

Donald> This is
Donald> the only problem I see, not some vague necessity to be abstractly
Donald> diverse for all dimensions (an obvious impossibility).

Don, I think your reaction is probably representative of our community, but
that is exactly the problem. Most of us are technicians (ie, non-managers).
We are asking mostly non-managers to select mostly non-managers for doing
very difficult management jobs.

As a group we tend to be ignorant of the real skills that are needed to be a
good AD. This is not a matter of intelligence or intent. It is a matter of
skill.

Requiring that the nomcom be really and significantly diverse is not a
matter of abstraction any more than worrying that the nomcom actually know
something about IETF processes. Nomcoms must conduct difficult deliberations
and pursue subtle trade-offs. It absolutely must have a diversity of
perspectives to ensure that essential-but-not-obvious considerations are
raised and that trade-offs are considered robustly.

>> ensure community comfort.

Donald> When the nomcom member volunteer pool was around 40, as it was for the
Donald> first several years, this problem didn't occur.

We had a far more homogeneous "population" then.

These sorts of sampling issues are bread and butter in social research
methodology. And, yes, that is the skillset that applies to this discussion
of nomcom selection. How to get a small group that represents a large group
is about sampling methodology.

Donald> frankly, if three
Donald> people from a company ended up on the nomcom but they were all well
Donald> known, decades long participants in the IETF, it would not be much of a
Donald> problem.

The challenge is in writing a reasonably objective rule that captures the
problems but lets the acceptable cases slide.  And, by the way, how would
you feel if EIGHT such people were selected, out of the 10 voting members?

Donald>  It's when some company routinely sends 45 people to IETF
Donald> meetings most of whom are relativley unknown to the community

I mostly agree.  That is why I am inclined to believe we should have two
pools of volunteers.  One with the relatively lax criteria in place today,
and one that is more stringent and requires a history of deeper involvement
in the IETF.

Donald>  and 15 of
Donald> them volunteer and qualify for nomcom and 3+ of those are selected that
Donald> its a problem.

>>     Company affiliation is the one that has surfaced. Are there others?

Donald> It's not "company", it's organization.

ok.

>>     members are drawn from and in terms of the mechanism for drawing from

Donald> The randomization, if you use something like RFC 2777, is about as
Donald> random as you can get.

Alas, I was afraid that my use of the word randomization would cause a focus
on the algorithm that is used now. However I meant the issue as a macro
issue.

It is really about the methodology of populating nomcom, rather than the
particular algorithm for drawing from a particular pool. The current
algorithm is fine. The problem is size and nature of the pool. The algorithm
can do little about this.

>> 3.  What should be the hard limits, in case the randomization does not work?

Donald> Randomization works by being random.

Not if the pool is too small or otherwise distorted. Again, as I note, this
is not rocket science. Nor is it math science. It is social science, and
there is quite a lot of experience with this problem.

Donald> "IETF management experience" is a whole different matter we should not
Donald> confuse with the issue at hand.

Huh? You mean you do not care how much knowledge about IETF management there
is, among the voting members of the group charged with choosing IETF
managers???

d/

---

From: Scott W Brim <[email-masked]>
Date: Mon, 11 Nov 2002 15:56:37 -0500

On Monday, November 11, 2002 3:01 PM -0500,
Dave Crocker <[email-masked]> allegedly wrote:
> Huh? You mean you do not care how much knowledge about IETF
> management there is, among the voting members of the group charged
> with choosing IETF managers???

Please describe the problems we have already had with lack of management
experience in Nomcom.

---

From: Donald Eastlake 3rd <[email-masked]>
Date: Mon, 11 Nov 2002 22:24:22 -0500 (EST)

On Mon, 11 Nov 2002, Dave Crocker wrote:

> Date: Mon, 11 Nov 2002 12:01:02 -0800
> To: Donald Eastlake 3rd <[email-masked]>

I guess this may be getting a bit more true. But there have also been
nomcom members from large companies who used non-company mailboxes for
their nomcom correspondence because thy thought it likely their business
email address was about to be disabled due to their intransigent failure
to follow their employers policies (not that these policies had anything
to do with nomcom action, they were OS/email client policies). I find 
the people active in the IETF tend to be less like corporate advocates 
than, for example, people active in the IEEE or W3C.

> different perspectives.  Nomcom deliberations absolutely rely on that

Of course all organizations are cultures and all people are members of
many cultures, etc. But the only perceived problem, the only thing these
is a consensus on, is to fix the
too-many-nomcom-members-from-the-same-organization problem. I am
satisfied that, with that fix, the present rules will provide adquate
diversity and apparently most other people are also.

> vague.  They pertain to a very basic construct in this sort of

I don't have a problem with statatements that diversity is important. I
don't have a problem with implementing the consensus and fixing the
too-many-nomcom-members-from-the-same-organization problem. I find it
pretty handwaving when you talk about country or maybe its geographic
region diversity and vaguely hint about there being lots of other kinds
of distasteful diversity that might be important, remarks that seem to
me designed to counger up racial, sexual orientation, vegitarian,
endian, and who knows what else kinds of diversity.

> attention to matters that are quite different from technical consideration.

But one thing nomcom doesn't need to pay a lot of attention to is
political considerations of nation states.

> good AD. This is not a matter of intelligence or intent. It is a matter of

It is obvious that you want radical changes in nomcom selection which
essentialy no one else on this list supports very much. I don't think it 
is going to happen this go around.

> raised and that trade-offs are considered robustly.

As I say, I believe that the random selection process achieves adequate
diversity ovedr time. Fixing the
too-many-nomcom-members-from-the-same-organization problem is needed to
assure the appearance of fairness and will further improve diversity.

What you want is a quota of people with IETF management experience, a 
very different thing.

> We had a far more homogeneous "population" then.

Not really. But with a smaller pool, there just weren't 4 people from
the same organization available to be picked.

> is about sampling methodology.

There is a spectrum of opinion here. There are those who think of the
nomcom members as having the job of simply absorbing and applying the
community input with minimum of self-originated judgement. Such people
want as huge a volunteer pool as possible and think its fine if 10
people are selected who are bascily just attendees and lurkers. Then
there are those like you who, it seems to me, are thinking that its very
heavily dependent on the judgement of the nomcom members, with some
feedback from the community, so it is absolutely vital that people with
a great depth of history and management experinece in the IETF are very
heavily represented on the nomcom. No previous debate on the nomcom has
ever resolved this or changed that many opinions, so we sort of proceed
down a middle course, which is probably the right thing.

> you feel if EIGHT such people were selected, out of the 10 voting members?

You obviously need a bright line rule that clear and easy to apply, even
if it rules out some acceptable cases. Anything else imposes too much of
a burden on the administrators.

If 8 such people were selected, I would expect, because the probability
was so low, that the selection was fixed rather than random. And, if the
people were as described, I'd have reasonable confidence in the nomcom's
decisions. But I would feel that no one outside the IETF would believe
the process was fair or that the IETF hadn't been captured by the
organization in question.

> and one that is more stringent and requires a history of deeper involvement

Since you are repeating yourself, I'll repeat myself. It's too
complicated and if you did want to encourage certain objectively defined
characteristics, you can do so by biasing the selection procedure as I
described in my message.

> can do little about this.

No, with todays nomcom pools with heavy representation from a few
companies, the current algorithm has the
too-many-nomcom-members-from-the-same-organization problem. If you
assume a pool of 100 of which 30 are 10 each from 3 organizations, the
probability of 4 or more members being selected form one of these
organizations is about 5%. In otherwords, a more or less universally
recognization unacceptable situtation will occur 1 in 20 selections.
Thus the algorithm must be changed, for example by adding a rule
implementing a prohibition more than 2 members from one organization.

> there is quite a lot of experience with this problem.

I see no reason to believe that the pool is too small. I think it is
plenty big.

> is, among the voting members of the group charged with choosing IETF

I appreciate you are trying to use the clear need to solve the
too-many-nomcom-members-from-the-same-organization problem as a hook to
once again propose management experience quotas, but there isn't any
consensus for that. And I won't even bother talking about the words you
are putting in my mouth.

I believe the current scheme provides adequate "knowledge about IETF
management" which, of course, is not the same thing as "experience as an 
IETF process manager".

Thanks,
Donald

---

From: Donald Eastlake 3rd <[email-masked]>
Date: Mon, 11 Nov 2002 22:42:10 -0500 (EST)

People in the IETF have always given their affiliation in IDs, RFCs, etc.

The argument that there are a few diffcult cases is an example of "the
fallacy of the beard". If someone has one hair on their chin, do they
have a beard? If someone with a beard plucks out one hair, do they still
have a bear? Continuing in this way, we can, in some sense, prove that
the concept of having a beard is meaningless. But people use the beard
concept every day and derive great utility from it.

The important thing is to have reasonably straight foward procedures
that are as transparent as they reasonably can be. Have the volunteers
list their affiliation. Include that in the posted list of volunteers
and in the list of those selected. And in each case be sure the list is
announced and available for some reasonable length of time until a fixed
deadline for any public comments. If questions arise before the
deadline, the nomcom chair decides. If questions arise after the
deadline, they are ignored. If nomcom members change affiliation after
selection, they remain nomcom members regardless.

I guess it can't hurt to tell someone they were skipped due to two
persons already having been chosen with their affiliation but they
should already have checked the affiliations in the volunteer list when
they were listed.

Thanks,
Donald

On Mon, 11 Nov 2002, Scott W Brim wrote:

> Date: Mon, 11 Nov 2002 10:07:12 -0500
> From: Scott W Brim <[email-masked]>
> To: Brian E Carpenter <[email-masked]>, EKR <[email-masked]>
> Cc: Dave Crocker <[email-masked]>, avri doria <[email-masked]>,
>      ietf-nomcom <[email-masked]>

---

From: Robert Elz <[email-masked]>
Date: Tue, 12 Nov 2002 17:57:01 +1100

Date:        Mon, 11 Nov 2002 22:42:10 -0500 (EST)
    From:        Donald Eastlake 3rd <[email-masked]>
    Message-ID:  <[email-masked]>

  | I guess it can't hurt to tell someone they were skipped due to two
  | persons already having been chosen with their affiliation

It is actually necessary (or perhaps too obvious to need to be said?)

That is, the algorithm is supposed to be announced, the data upon which it
is based is public, so anyone can run the algorithm and validate the output.

Doing that, everyone can see that X should have been chosen, and wasn't.

Then, you can either read that as "obvious, just look at the affiliations,
and you'll see why", or as needing a statement "X was skipped because...".

kre

---

From: Donald Eastlake 3rd <[email-masked]>
Date: Tue, 12 Nov 2002 09:10:16 -0500 (EST)

Or, from another point of view, you can consider the string comparison 
on the affiliations, as posted, to be part of the algorithm.

Thanks,
Donald

On Tue, 12 Nov 2002, Robert Elz wrote:

> Date: Tue, 12 Nov 2002 17:57:01 +1100
> From: Robert Elz <[email-masked]>

---

From: Mark Allman <[email-masked]>
Date: Tue, 12 Nov 2002 12:22:57 -0500

>  his or her principal employer is;

I would vote to tweak the above every so slightly...  I would say
when volunteering folks include the name of their employer and any
other organization they feel particularly close to.  For instance, I
work *for* BBN.  But, I drive to a NASA facility every day.  I would
not know which to list if I had to pick a primary organization.
This change only makes things more conservative and is not really
any more complex.

allman

--
Mark Allman -- BBN/NASA GRC -- http://roland.grc.nasa.gov/~mallman/

---

From: Dave Crocker <[email-masked]>
Date: Tue, 12 Nov 2002 11:08:09 -0800

Scott,

Monday, November 11, 2002, 12:56:37 PM, you wrote:
Scott> Please describe the problems we have already had with lack of management
Scott> experience in Nomcom.

Area Directors must juggle two, very difficult and very different roles. One
is technical quality assurance. The other is process management.

Nomcom discussion does pay attention to whether someone plays well with
others, but tends to pay less attention to other management skills of
candidates.  Instead, discussion tends to be dominated by concern about
technical excellence of the candidate.

When the discussion is about IETF processes, those with little experience in
it tend to have a rather simpler or inaccurate model than those who have had
direct involvement.  That difference is important in assessing who is likely
to work well as an AD.

Therefore a nomcom that has too little IETF experience among its voting
members is likely to make dangerously naive decisions.

d/

---

From: Scott W Brim <[email-masked]>
Date: Tue, 12 Nov 2002 14:17:24 -0500

On Tuesday, November 12, 2002 2:08 PM -0500,
Dave Crocker <[email-masked]> allegedly wrote:
> Therefore a nomcom that has too little IETF experience among its
> voting members is likely to make dangerously naive decisions.

I understand your rationale.  I was asking if you could describe
specific problems we have had that you wish to solve.  If you do so then
we can evaluate whether having non-voting nomcom members, and incumbent
ADs, covers those problems well enough already, or whether we need to
develop new procedures.

---

From: Mark Allman <[email-masked]>
Date: Tue, 12 Nov 2002 14:54:21 -0500

> voting members is likely to make dangerously naive decisions.

So, is 2 of 3 the right touchstone?  Or, would something with a bit
more history be better (4 of 6, 5 of 9, etc.)?  In the limit someone
can now attend 2 meetings and be eligible.  Is that adequate to do a
good job on nomcom (i.e., to have an appreciation of the job of an
AD)?

allman

---

From: Dave Crocker <[email-masked]>
Date: Tue, 12 Nov 2002 11:55:42 -0800

Scott,

Tuesday, November 12, 2002, 11:17:24 AM, you wrote:
Scott> On Tuesday, November 12, 2002 2:08 PM -0500,
>> voting members is likely to make dangerously naive decisions.

Scott> I understand your rationale.  I was asking if you could describe
Scott> specific problems we have had that you wish to solve.

1. I'm sure you are not asking me to divulge any specifics of nomcom
deliberations, since they are confidential.

2. Sorry, but the extent that I think it reasonable to talk about the internals of
nomcom behavior, I've offered what I feel I can.

Scott>   If you do so then
Scott> we can evaluate whether having non-voting nomcom members, and incumbent
Scott> ADs, covers those problems well enough already, or whether we need to
Scott> develop new procedures.

There is a separate discussion worth having, about the role of non-voting
members.

The danger on relying on them for fundamental aspects of the process is that
it effectively put them in charge of that process and the result.

That's not the way the system was intended to operate, nor do I think it
should be.  The non-voting participants are incredibly valuable.  My feeling
is that they are sometimes TOO valuable.  I tend to think that a liaison
should be a consultant and should liaise, but that they should not be
primary participants in the process.

Voting members are supposed to make the decisions. It is therefore essential
that the voting members hold enough understanding of things to be able to
make the decisions.

d/

---

From: Fred Baker <[email-masked]>
Date: Tue, 12 Nov 2002 12:26:23 -0800

At 10:24 PM 11/11/2002 -0500, Donald Eastlake 3rd wrote:
>But the only perceived problem, the only thing these
>too-many-nomcom-members-from-the-same-organization problem.

dumb question, for which there must be an obvious answer. I have seen 
several recent nomcoms with more than one participant from the same 
company, and I haven't noticed in the outcomes of those nomcoms anything 
that smacked of corporate bias.

In this discussion, we're getting into some pretty microscopic cases, 
presuming for example that everyone who sent in their name now looks at the 
list coming out, notices that they were the third from their organization, 
and opts back out, etc. To accomplish that, we need timestamps in the list 
and some interesting controls.

Are we solving a real problem, or one that is merely worried about? If the 
latter, can we avoid a difficult and complex process to manage it?

---

From: Donald Eastlake 3rd <[email-masked]>
Date: Tue, 12 Nov 2002 20:55:42 -0500 (EST)

On Tue, 12 Nov 2002, Fred Baker wrote:

> Date: Tue, 12 Nov 2002 12:26:23 -0800
> From: Fred Baker <[email-masked]>
> To: ietf-nomcom <[email-masked]>
> >But the only perceived problem, the only thing there

The problem isn't 2, it's 4. The problem isn't any specific nomcom
outcome, it is the appearance of gross bias and the burden placed on
nomcom members by that appearance. With the current pattern of nomcom
volunteering, about 1 out of 20 times, random selection will result in a
nomcom with 40% or more of the voting members from the same
organization. Although I think that with the huge pools of volunteers we
are getting, limiting to one person per organization would be best, I'm
fine with a limit of 2, which appears to me to be the consensus.  That
is, 3 or more is prohibited.

> and some interesting controls.

No. the algorithm given in RFC 2777 and draft 2777bis selects people
from the list in a random way. Everyone has an equal chance of being the
Nth person selected for all N < list length. If no problems arise, the
first ten people selected are it. There are several types of problems
that can happen. Some can volunteer, be selected, and then turn out to
be uncontactable! This has happened. So you have to go to the next
(11th, etc.) selection according to the algorithm. Also, although it
shouldn't happen, if the administrator is a bit slow and there are
disputes, you might have someone with an unresolved status when the list
is posted. In that case, it is much better to include them and, if they
turn out to be disqualified, skip thm if tghey are selected and go on to
the m+1st selection because if you leave them out but then have to
insert them into the list, it totally changes the selection rather than
just changing one person.

What is being suggested is to simply add a rule such that the
administrator, when going through the list of volunteers in the random
selection order specified by the algorith will know that if two people
from an organization have been earlier selected, any further people from
that organization that come up are to be skipped.  There is no need for
time stamps anywhere. No one has every said anything about any volunteer
needing to back out.

> latter, can we avoid a difficult and complex process to manage it? 

Havinig 40% or more of the voting nomcom from one organization is a real
problem that has happened and will happen again. The rule to eliminiate
this problem is trivial. The overall selection procedure is moderately
complex but we are talking about a very minor tweak to it.

Thanks,
Donald

---

From: Scott W Brim <[email-masked]>
Date: Tue, 12 Nov 2002 21:01:55 -0500

> time stamps anywhere. No one has every said anything about any volunteer

Exactly.  As frosting, you could say that if someone is selected and
notices that he has an affiliation which the administrator didn't
notice, he can recuse himself, but that's neither necessary nor
sufficient.

swb

---

From: Jeff Williams <[email-masked]>
Date: Tue, 12 Nov 2002 20:07:33 -0800

Mark and all,

  I would think that which is you primary organization is a no brainer.
If you employer is BNN that is you primary organizational affiliation
that you would list...

Regards,

---

From: Donald Eastlake 3rd <[email-masked]>
Date: Tue, 12 Nov 2002 21:37:16 -0500 (EST)

On Tue, 12 Nov 2002, Dave Crocker wrote:

> Date: Tue, 12 Nov 2002 11:08:09 -0800
> To: Scott W Brim <[email-masked]>

Well, I've been on four nomcoms, 2 as a voting members, one as chair and
one as previous chair, and I believe those nomcoms gave reasonable
consideration to management attributes.

> direct involvement.  That difference is important in assessing who is likely

As far as I know, essentially all nomcoms are particularly solicitous of
getting the opinion of other ADs and the nomcom chair, people who
presumably have pretty much maximum IETF management experience.

> members is likely to make dangerously naive decisions.

And a nomcom too heavily dominated by those inside the IETF management
might make dangerously incestuous decisions.

> d/

I'm actually not that adverse to the idea of biasing selection towards
those with management experience, I'm just leary of trying to make too
many changes at once and adding too much complication.

Donald

---

From: Dave Crocker <[email-masked]>
Date: Tue, 12 Nov 2002 19:03:45 -0800

Donald> I'm actually not that adverse to the idea of biasing selection towards
Donald> those with management experience, I'm just leary of trying to make too
Donald> many changes at once and adding too much complication.

ack.

d/

---

From: Mark Allman <[email-masked]>
Date: Tue, 12 Nov 2002 22:13:08 -0500

>   I would think that which is you primary organization is a no
> brainer.  If you employer is BNN that is you primary
> organizational affiliation that you would list...

But, my point is that if we're doing this it is because we want to
avoid the appearance of collusion.  And, if that is the case then I
don't know that I shouldn't list both.  I think employer is a good
start, but we should encourage folks to list any other organization
they feel at all conflicted about.

allman

--
Mark Allman -- NASA GRC/BBN -- http://roland.grc.nasa.gov/~mallman/

---

From: Jeff Williams <[email-masked]>
Date: Tue, 12 Nov 2002 22:20:27 -0800

Mark and all,

> they feel at all conflicted about.

  This seems to me to be more of a circular argument in your particular
case or instance.  Listing both would be fine, but not listing both
as you primary affiliation...  This was my answer and point to your
original consideration...

  I think, and perhaps I am incorrect, that you are concerned
about COI in your particular instance/case so you would therefore
choose to list both.  But listing both as primary affiliation would
be more of a COI concern than listing both BNN and NASA with
BNN being your primary affiliation.

Regards,

---

From: Fred Baker <[email-masked]>
Date: Tue, 12 Nov 2002 22:13:25 -0800

At 08:55 PM 11/12/2002 -0500, Donald Eastlake 3rd wrote:
>from the list in a random way.

I was referring to a previous email in this thread

---

From: Robert Elz <[email-masked]>
Date: Wed, 13 Nov 2002 18:43:15 +1100

Date:        Tue, 12 Nov 2002 22:13:25 -0800
    From:        Fred Baker <[email-masked]>
    Message-ID:  <[email-masked]>

  | I was referring to a previous email in this thread 

Fred, your earlier mail seemed to be suggesting that people not volunteer
for the nomcom if there were already 2 (or more) other people from the
same organisation.

That was never the intent - only that no more than 2 be actually chosen to
serve on the nomcom.   As many as like can volunteer.

kre

---

From: Donald Eastlake 3rd <[email-masked]>
Date: Wed, 13 Nov 2002 08:43:22 -0500 (EST)

Sorry, I was reading messages in inverse order and replied before 
having seend them all.

Donald

---

From: Brian E Carpenter <[email-masked]>
Date: Wed, 13 Nov 2002 15:15:37 +0100

> they feel at all conflicted about.

I think this is sweating the small stuff. We are trying to
stop egregious gaming of the system, and I think self-identifying
the primary employer is necessary and sufficient.

   Brian

---

From: avri doria <[email-masked]>
Date: Wed, 13 Nov 2002 22:30:50 +0100

> As long as our lawyer is happy with any liability that might create, sure.

Now that you bring it up, I am also interested in knowing whether there 
are any
implications or repercussions to us making a decision based on corporate,
or organizational affiliation.

I am not arguing about the reasons for or against the nomcom being a 
different
sort of process and therefore this being in some sense appropriate.  I 
am asking
about implications it has for the nature of the organization and its legal
liabilities.

a.