Subject: Re: Should a CB approve a slate or individuals?

From: Harald Tveit Alvestrand <[email-masked]>
Date: Tue, 01 Apr 2003 09:48:10 +0200

--On tirsdag, april 01, 2003 13:02:29 +1000 Geoff Huston <[email-masked]> 
wrote:

> I am of the view that the most effective process is one of individual
> confirmation or rejection , rather than confirmation or rejection of the
> entire slate of names.
>
> The task here is to pick the best qualified individuals for each open
> position, and the focus should be on the attributes of the individual to
> the requirements of the open position. Treating this as a slate tends to
> make the entire confirmation process tougher.

There have been cases in the past where it's been quite obvious that two 
people should not serve on the IESG together. Mostly because of fundamental 
disagreements about how to run a single area ("incompatibe co-ADs"), but 
there could be other versions of this problem.

If A and B were both considered "good people" by Nomcom, and A was 
advanced, but rejected, it would be logical for Nomcom to consider putting 
B into another slot for which he was better qualified than the original 
proposal, since the consideration that blocked him from being considered 
has gone away.

Similarly, if A was advanced, and accepted, but another candidate was 
rejected, and B was the only reasonable alternative, the Nomcom would 
logically have to consider withdrawing A from the slate.

Locking the process to "individuals only" would then produce a suboptimal 
result.

That's not what we expect to be the common case, but I'd like to have the 
possibility open.

                           Harald

---

From: Geoff Huston <[email-masked]>
Date: Tue, 01 Apr 2003 18:55:31 +1000

At 09:48 AM 4/1/2003 +0200, Harald Tveit Alvestrand wrote:
Locking the process to "individuals only" would then produce a suboptimal 
result.

>That's not what we expect to be the common case, but I'd like to have the 

I feel that this approach is a new vector in the nomcom process, and one that
I'm not entirely happy with. I'm not entirely happy with the concept of the
IESG or the IAB being a clump of orthodoxy, where the individual members are
chosen according to their level of adherence to a common theme or membership of
a particular clique or school of networking thought. I'm not sure any of us 
see benefit
in such an direction for the IETF.

I would like to think that the IESG and IAB folk have been nominated by 
their peers
because they are regarded as being qualified _as individuals_ to do the 
task, and I
would be much more comfortable if the confirming bodies had the ability to 
see the
nominations as a set of individual nominations and reviewed then as a 
collection
of individuals, rather than a 'take it or reject it' package.

         Geoff

---

From: Randy Bush <[email-masked]>
Date: Tue, 01 Apr 2003 07:24:15 -0800

> I would like to think that the IESG and IAB folk have been
> nominated by their peers because they are regarded as being
> qualified _as individuals_ to do the task, and I would be much
> more comfortable if the confirming bodies had the ability to see
> the nominations as a set of individual nominations and reviewed
> then as a collection of individuals, rather than a 'take it or
> reject it' package.

this completely ignores the common business practice of the culture
of a "management team" which works well *together*.  there is a
very good reason that this is often the *first* criterion which VCs
use when making decisions about funding.

randy

---

From: Brian E Carpenter <[email-masked]>
Date: Tue, 01 Apr 2003 17:58:52 +0200

below...

> That's not what we expect to be the common case, but I'd like to have the

Since this part of RFC 2727 isn't broken, why are we trying to fix it?

   Brian