Subject: Re: I-D Action: draft-moonesamy-recall-rev-00.txt

From: Brian E Carpenter <[email-masked]>
Date: Wed, 27 Mar 2019 17:26:32 +1300

Hi,

Thanks for the work on this.

I agree with the general idea of lowering the bar for recall petitions.
But some of the discussion seems to overlook that it's an extreme
measure, and one that should normally be made unnecessary by the
regular appeal chain. If we make recalls *too* easy we might be upset
by the amount of distraction they would cause. Some specific comments
follow:

> Abstract
> 
>    The procedures for initiating a recall specified in RFC 7437 restrict
>    signatories to those who are "nomcom qualified".  This document
>    suggests those limitations were unanticipated and undesirable side-
>    effects and proposes to remove them.

I think the second sentence is untrue, or perhaps it means to say:

  This choice limited the signatories in a way that had undesirable
  side-effects, and therefore this document changes it.

Then:

> ... It also proposes that...

No, if it's a BCP it doesn't "propose", it "specifies".

> This document is intended to update RFC 7437.

Again, if it's a BCP it doesn't intend, it simply "updates" 7437.

There are several other places in the Introduction and the Rationale
where there is a similar issue - if this text is a BCP that changes
the procedure, all references to the old procedure need to be written
in the past tense.

> 2.2.  Eligibility of Remote Participants
> 
>    In 2017, the IESG set a requirement for the registration of remote
>    participants at IETF meetings.

I'd like a citation for that. To what extent was it just a technical
requirement to assist Meetecho setup, and to what extent was it a
policy matter?

Also, as has been pointed out, the act of registering is not
the same as actually participating remotely; it has zero cost to
the registrant and I doubt if anybody checks whether you actually
connect to any sessions. And does passive observation, without
presenting or speaking, count? Does watching the video afterwards
count? So I really don't see remote registration as telling us
much about a person's degree of participation. There are other
proxies for remote participation, like writing drafts or taking
part in email discussions, which IMHO are probably better.

Joke alert: maybe one's position on the "Narten list" should
determine eligibility.

>    Restricting signatories to those who are "nomcom
>    qualified" disenfranchises active remote participants who reside in
>    emerging countries as they lack the extensive travel resources
>    required to seek redress.

I think the word "disenfranchises" is wrong. It's somewhat political
and emotionally loaded, and is typically used in formal voting
systems; but the IETF doesn't vote. "Excludes" would be factually
accurate and less emotive.

Similarly, remote participants can appeal under RFC2026 (or activate
the anti-harassment rules) and that is the primary method of redress
in the IETF. A recall is rather different - it isn't a matter of redress,
it's a matter of making the IETF work properly.

Also this issue affects many people, not just those from emerging
economies, such as unfunded participants or people unable to travel
for personal reasons.

So I think the text needs to say something much simpler:

 Restricting signatories to those who are "nomcom
 qualified" excluded active remote participants unable to
 travel for whatever reason.

>    The "nomcom qualified" requirement for a recall petition is contrary
>    to the spirit and one of the goals of the Internet Standards Process
>    [RFC2026] about procedures which are intended to be fair

While I might agree, I think this is a distraction and should be deleted.

> 3.  Recall petition
...
> 
>    At any time, at least 10 members of the IETF community, may request
>    by signed petition (email is acceptable) to the Internet Society
>    President the recall of any sitting IAB or IESG member, IETF Trustee
>    or IETF LLC Director.  All signatories must have registered to attend
>    and have participated physically or remotely at least three out of
>    the previous five IETF meetings.

I think the reduction to 10 signatories is a good idea.

But, as above: how do we verify remote participation, and why not qualify
people who have simply submitted drafts or been active on mailing lists
during the last two years?

Regards
   Brian Carpenter

---

From: Spencer Dawkins at IETF <[email-masked]>
Date: Wed, 27 Mar 2019 08:40:17 +0100

Just top-posting - I wonder if doing this process change as an
https://tools.ietf.org/html/rfc3933 process experiment (one-year duration)
would make people feel better about trying this.

RFC 3933 was intended to let the community try things without having to
prove that nothing bad is going to happen after we make a process change.

Spencer

On Wed, Mar 27, 2019 at 5:27 AM Brian E Carpenter <
[email-masked]> wrote:

> ....

---

From: S Moonesamy <[email-masked]>
Date: Wed, 27 Mar 2019 01:15:24 -0700

Hi Brian,
>Thanks for the work on this.

Thank you for the review.

>by the amount of distraction they would cause. Some specific comments

There is the following sentence in the -01 (which I have not posted 
yet): Setting up a Recall Committee is a costly effort.

>   side-effects, and therefore this document changes it.

The suggested change, if I understood it correctly, is to remove 
"unanticipated".  I went through the archives and I could not find 
the discussion where those limitations were anticipated.

>No, if it's a BCP it doesn't "propose", it "specifies".

Yes.  I'll change that word.

>Again, if it's a BCP it doesn't intend, it simply "updates" 7437.

Ok.

>the procedure, all references to the old procedure need to be written

The I-D was written to propose changes to a BCP.  I agree that it 
should be in the past tense if what is being proposed is approved.

>requirement to assist Meetecho setup, and to what extent was it a

Thank you for raising this issue.  There is a message from the IETF 
Chair at 
https://mailarchive.ietf.org/arch/msg/ietf/ARWs2NaG1mOh2a6In4hgTtfH9vI 
about a proposed change in requirement for remote 
participants.  There was another message from Ms Cooper at 
https://mailarchive.ietf.org/arch/msg/ietf/nxDHpprMppNQPKkA18FcZ75_GfM 
You raised a good point.  It was not clear at that time whether the 
decision was a technical one or a policy matter.   The sentence from 
the I-D does not say anything about the decision being a policy 
matter.  The matter would be handled by the IAOC if it was just a 
technical requirement.  The IAOC minutes for that period do not show 
any discussion about assisting the Meetecho setup.

>part in email discussions, which IMHO are probably better.

Attending a working group session does not necessarily mean 
participation.  It is similar to physical attendance where a person 
can sit in the room and watch the presentations and discussions.  The 
difference between the two is that the person sitting in the room 
paid at least USD 1,000 to be there.

Based on the past discussions about "participation" I would say that 
anything which influences a "standards process" decision counts.  I 
don't think that watching the video afterwards counts as participation.

>Joke alert: maybe one's position on the "Narten list" should

I commented on two Last Calls last week.  I also sent an email to 
thank you for responding to a question which I asked.  It was a bit 
awkward to send those emails as that list does not distinguish 
between responses to Last Calls and emails which the IETF would not 
view as useful.

>accurate and less emotive.

One of the definitions for "disenfranchise" (O.E.D) is: "Deprive 
(someone) of a right or privilege".  Is the word "disenfranchise" 
politically incorrect for the IETF Stream?

>it's a matter of making the IETF work properly.

One of the definitions of "redress" (O.E.D) is: "remedy or set right 
(an undesirable or unfair situation)".  The section of the draft is 
about remote participants not being able to do that.  The situation, 
currently, is that some remote participants would have to find the 
money to attend three out of five meetings to seek a remedy through a 
"recall petition".  If I understood your point correctly, those 
remote participants should only have access to the appeal procedures, 
as set in RFC 2026.

>economies, such as unfunded participants or people unable to travel

Yes.

>  travel for whatever reason.

I don't see any of those participants commenting on the I-D.  It will 
be difficult for me to provide an answer if anyone claims that the 
above text is not true.

>While I might agree, I think this is a distraction and should be deleted.

At this stage it is, in my opinion, useful for the IESG to consider 
that as part of its evaluation of the I-D.

>I think the reduction to 10 signatories is a good idea.

Thank you.

>during the last two years?

The above is a good question.  There may be a better way to tackle this.

Given that anyone can submit a draft, the barrier may be XML 
editing.  As for being active on mailing list, does a "+1" count as 
"been active"?

Regards,
S. Moonesamy

---

From: John C Klensin <[email-masked]>
Date: Wed, 27 Mar 2019 14:33:39 -0400

Brian,

Most of your points have already been addressed (and the two of
you and others should certainly continue that conversation) but
I want to make some observations on text for which I'm probably
responsible, especially text that was probably carried forward
from draft-klensin-recall-rev, and to add a few comments as an
individual.

--On Wednesday, March 27, 2019 17:26 +1300 Brian E Carpenter
<[email-masked]> wrote:

>...
> I agree with the general idea of lowering the bar for recall
> petitions. But some of the discussion seems to overlook that
> it's an extreme measure, and one that should normally be made
> unnecessary by the regular appeal chain.

Certainly for some cases, yes.  But I think we need to keep one
important distinction between the appeals process and recalls in
mind.  Our theory about appeals has mostly been that they are
more of a "I think you folks got this decision wrong, possibly
because you did not consider these issues, please think about it
again".  That is reflected in the fact that the first procedural
step (or even pre-step) in a repeal is always to go back to the
people most involved in the decision and ask that they rethink
it.   There is no necessary implication of bad behavior or bad
motives and we try to avoid that.   The first step is never to
go directly to a higher body and to ask them to change the
decision.  Indeed, if an appeal of an IESG action ends up with
the IAB, the IAB still cannot change the decision; it can only
strongly encourage the IESG to reconsider.  In retrospect, maybe
we should have called the process "reconsideration initiation"
rather than "appeal", but the former does not drop easily off
the tongue.

Recalls, by contrast, are directed at one or more individuals
over some category of bad (or non-performing) behavior and are
definitely an appeal (sic) to a different authority to overrule
someone's staying in office.  Consider:

o Someone has stopped performing, disappears, and doesn't
respond to stimuli.  Nothing to appeal.  Probably we need a
better way to cope with that then the appeals process if only
because the length of time needed to get signatures together,
organize a recall committee, have it meet and agree to the
obvious might be better spent with getting someone into the
position, but that issue is outside the scope of this I-D.

o Someone in a leadership position is consistently behaving
badly in the decisions they are making, but in a way that is not
really an appropriate topic for the ombudsteam.  In many cases,
this could be dealt with by one appeal, per incident, until the
person involved either resigns or the other members of the
relevant body resort to physical violence, but appeals, beyond a
certain point, are really not the right answer if the person
doesn't get the point after a very few of them.

o Someone in a leadership body is, as the saying goes,
consistently not playing well with other children to the point
of impeding that body's work or, perhaps, is suffering from
conflicts of interest that the other members of the body can
override but that are consistently blocking or impeding
progress.  Some versions of this problem might be a topic for
the ombudsteam; many are not.  Because the bad behavior may not
show up directly in decisions, appeals may not be feasible or
relevant.   This, incidentally, is one of the reasons why
members of the leadership body should be able to initiate
recalls.

>  If we make recalls
> *too* easy we might be upset by the amount of distraction they
> would cause.

And that is why the shift from "anyone can initiate" to the
current rules occurred.

 Some specific comments follow:
> 
>> Abstract
>> 
>>    The procedures for initiating a recall specified in RFC
>>    7437 restrict signatories to those who are "nomcom
>>    qualified".  This document suggests those limitations were
>>    unanticipated and undesirable side- effects and proposes
>>    to remove them.
> 
> I think the second sentence is untrue, 

I think the sentence was a carryover from
draft-klensin-recall-rev-00 and the associated discussions
(around 2005).    Those discussions, such as they were, made it
very clear that the exclusion of IESG and IAB members by the
nomcom-eligibility rule came as a surprise to a significant
number of people.  Hence "unanticipated side effect".    It
almost certainly does need work for the current draft.

>...
> There are several other places in the Introduction and the
> Rationale where there is a similar issue - if this text is a
> BCP that changes the procedure, all references to the old
> procedure need to be written in the past tense.

IMO, it has been ambiguous for decades whether I-Ds that are
intended to evolve into BCP (or other action-specifying) RFCs
should be written in future tense (because the action is still a
proposal and fixed by the RFC Editor) or past (because the
action will have occurred by the time the document is
published).  If we are going to complain to authors about that,
it is probably time that the IESG and RFC Editor (and, by the
way, IANA) make and publicize a policy) rather than beating up
on authors episodically.

> Joke alert: maybe one's position on the "Narten list" should

I'd be happy to increase both my number of messages and their
length if you
think that would help, or help make the above point :-)

>...
> But, as above: how do we verify remote participation, and why
> not qualify people who have simply submitted drafts or been
> active on mailing lists during the last two years?

I think any simple rule one picks will turn out to generate
hypothetical cases in which it might be pathological.
Remembering that someone (or a company) can buy their way into
Nomcom eligibility by paying to come to the meeting, register,
and then do nothing of any use to the IETF or anyone else (doing
email, playing tourist, going to the beach,...).  One could make
a case for remote participants being forced to actually get onto
at least some Meetecho sessions as a participant to qualify, but
suppose an equivalent qualification were imposed on f2f
participants, e.g., by requiring signing a few blue sheets.  If
someone is included to game the f2f process, they either sign
the blue sheets and leave the room or sign them and then sit and
do email.   Similarly, nothing prevents me from signing onto
Meetecho as a participant and then leaving the computer running
while I heard for the nearest bar or other facility.  My guess
is that we need to use some mechanism that prevents several
people from getting upset about a particular event, meeting the
petition qualifications, and initiating a recall.   Almost
anything that requires several instances of contact over a year
or more should be sufficient to demonstrate at least token
longer-term involvement.  Trying to pin things down much more
than that is likely, IMO, to descend into enough edge cases and
odd situations to not be worth the trouble.

best,
   john