Re: [Eligibility-discuss] Handling the fear of "bogus" recall petitions

["Adrian Farrel" <[e-mail]>]

Hey Eliot,

> But I liked Barry’s groupings:
>
> a.  Those who have attended in person 3/5 (status quo)
> b.  Those who have previously attended attended in person
>    but are now remote.
> c.  Those who have never attended.
>
> I don’t think many people could seriously object to group (b) being
> added.  The concern is primarily with group (c).  There is also a certain
> amount of skin in the game that may be of value.  The skin in the game
> could take the form of meeting attendance or having written an RFC or
> having had a draft adopted by a WG.  These are all pretty good indicators
> and there may be others (open source authors having implemented a
> spec, for instance).  The idea is not to set the bar too high for people who
> are using our stuff, but high enough still that gaming would be unlikely.
>
> Thoughts?

I fear the wheel may come off your Gedankenexperiment as you introduce ever more subcategories of participant.
c.i. Never attended but been a remote participant for 7 years
c.ii. Never attended and no RFC published, but 3 WG drafts
c.iii. Never attended but made significant contributions to mailing list discussions in more than 4 WGs
c.iv. Never attended and never had an RFC published, but chaired a WG

And so on. I am pretty sure you can't parameterise this successfully and, while you might know it when you see it, that means that you cannot properly write down what it would mean to be "a participant in good standing."

But let's take a leaf out of Ekr's book and try to understand what problem you are solving.

I think you are worried about "gaming the system". So, what is the real risk?
Presumably that a number (G.T. 0) of recalls petitions are filed without due cause, and that those petitions would do enough harm to the IETF that it would merit making a statement that some people are not considered of sufficient standing to have their concerns addressed by a recall petition. And what is that potential harm?
- Reputational damage to the "accused"? That was suggested 
  as a reason against the ombudsteam, and I cannot see why 
  anyone considers being falsely accused and then found not
  guilty to be harmful to their reputation. 
- Cost to the IETF in terms of wasted effort. Yes, a small number
  of hours of a few people could be wasted reading the petition
  and supporting material. But that doesn't sound like a big cost.
- The ISOC chief has to find a recall panel chair. I hear him when 
   he says this is a big deal, but I don't think it is such a challenge.
   It is certainly nothing compared to finding a NomCom chair
   since the recall panel has a fixed and focused short-duration
   task.
Are there other costs/harms? Maybe there could be if there was a flurry of recalls. But surely that would show up.

But I will still maintain that the 3-of-5 rule, or something similar (since 3-of-5 is required for physical, we might require 5-of-5 by remote when no more than 2-of-5 has been physical), is enough to handle any gaming of the system. And should gaming show up (which it would, I think, although I caution against anyone saying that a recall that fails is anything other than a legitimate concern correctly expressed) then we could easily revisit this. That is, we can use DevOps principles to refine as necessary, yet make incremental and beneficial changes.

To make clear my reverse problem statement. I am only somewhat concerned that remote participants might at some future time have grounds for requesting a recall. Frankly, I think there are probably other ways of addressing the issues that arise (although I will confess that I only feel confident in those other ways after 20 years participating and 6 years on the IESG, so perhaps remote participants might feel the need of a more blunt instrument). No, what worries me is what we say to the 850 or so people who register and participate remotely at IETF meetings when we state that they do not have the right of any involvement in a procedure designed to rectify iniquity.

Best,
Adrian