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

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

Hi,

Something that is not in draft-moonesamy-recall-rev but which I floated
before, was that the list of signatures should not be exclusively remote
participants. That is, the petitioners would need to persuade some physical
participants to co-sign.

You might note, we already apply this today, but the threshold is 100%
physical participants.

I think that would help mitigate the risk of any attack.

I'd also note that the draft doesn't just allow any old remote participant,
but still requires the 3-of-5 threshold. That means that anyone wanting to
DoS has to spend at least eight months preparing.

Lastly (and we did discuss this on the list, before) should we find
ourselves attacked in this way, it is very, very quick to shut off the
vector: you simply change the rules again.

And I would like to contrast this with the enfranchisement issue which is
that two fifths of our meeting attendees are now remote. That means that the
IETF is (as it has always billed itself) an organisation where the work is
done on the mailing lists and through Internet-Drafts. Hooray for that!
Hooray also for the fact that our systems and tools are becoming useable by
remote participants. But this does mean that we have to take seriously this
changing demographic and send a clear message that we support remote
participants as real players not "second class" citizens. Yes, this might
mean changing NomCom eligibility as well, and that should be looked at, but
I don't see why the two things would be tied.

Thanks for an instructive call today.

Best,
Adrian