Subject: Re: SUMMARY: publish list of nominees?

From: John C Klensin <[email-masked]>
Date: Fri, 29 Mar 2002 23:46:32 -0500

Geoff,

I share your concerns about incomplete summaries and early
consensus assertions (or even hypotheses) as I fear they can
confuse things, rather than helping them converge.  But I want
to address one substantive point (and, I think, disagree with
your conclusion)...

--On Saturday, 30 March, 2002 10:31 +1100 Geoff Huston
<[email-masked]> wrote:

> Firstly, you omitted an argument that publishing such a list
> would increase the likelihood of organized public campaigning
> for positions. you also omitted the argument that such actions
> would do nothing to increase the level of confidence in the
> Nomcom performing its duties diligently.
>...

It seems to me that we have a more or less classic tradeoff
here, not a strong case for one position or the other.  I think
there are two options and two failure cases:

(i) If we expose the names, especially if we do so repeatedly as
the lists get shorter, we increase the risk of organized
campaigning, as you suggest.  We also increase the risk of
certain "dirty tricks" in the election process, e.g., campaigns
to flood the nomcom with derogatory statements about one or more
candidates in the hope of improving the comparative changes of
others.

(ii) If we don't expose the names, we increase the risk that the
nomcom will not get critical information (either positive or
negative) relative to one or more particular candidates because
the people who have that information might not be aware the
individual is being considered.  We also increase the risk of a
slightly different set of "dirty tricks" --e.g., a whispering
campaign to discredit a possible or known candidate-- being
successful because, unless it has internal knowledge, a nomcom
is slightly less likely to get a balanced view.

I personally lean slightly toward the latter as being the better
choice, despite the risks of organized campaigns.  The argument
I find persuasive is that, regardless of how we tune this, a
major challenge facing a nomcom is the separation of information
from noise.  If a given nomcom is good at that and does it
carefully, then a little extra noise (as from an organized
campaign) will not be significant, but a little more information
might be significantly helpful.  I would also expect them to be
suspicious of anyone who seems to be actively campaigning, if
only because actively seeking an IAB or IESG role probably
indicates inadequate understanding of those roles and what is
involved in tham.  And, in the unlikely event that a nomcom is
not careful and diligent in separating signal from noise, I
suggest that the IETF is likely to be in more or less serious
trouble regardless of how we make this particular decision.

     john