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

[Michael StJohns <[e-mail]>]

On 10/25/2019 9:46 AM, Adrian Farrel wrote:
>
> Nicely said, Richard. And to be fair to Eliot, he started off trying 
> to qualify a number of ways of counting participation.
>
Actually, I don't think I completely agree with Richard's taxonomy.   
Yes the IESG has impact on the set of people Richard listed, but the IAB 
- not so much,, and the LLC even less so - at least directly.

I think it's probably a distraction trying to measure the "much more 
affected" here.

> And that just leaves us trying to measure who is “much more affected” 
> in a relatively simplistic way so that we avoid complex evaluations 
> and appeals and such like.
>
> The current system tried to summarise all of these aspects through the 
> raw measure of attendance. That is, it wasn’t using attendance for its 
> own sake (although, obviously, as you note, one of classes of people 
> who are affected), but as a crude measure of who was contributing in 
> all of the various ways.
>
> So, what is going on here is to recognise that the existing measure is 
> excluding a group of people who contribute just as much in various 
> ways, and to try to find a simple way of including them. Obviously, 
> there is no intention to open us up to harm, but a strong feeling that 
> we need to attempt to be fairer.
>
> Thus, the proposal was to use repeated remote attendance over a period 
> as a measure. There may be other measures and discussing them would be 
> good. But those I have heard so far tend to get complicated quickly.
>
I think that Eliot's  "skin in the game" comment is somewhat on target.  
People who attend in person contribute themselves to much more than just 
the documents/standards/WGs in which they're participating - they mentor 
and discuss and socialize the IETF culture; the cost and fees of 
attending the meeting show at least someone thinks its valuable to have 
them there.  The individual dedicates some amount of time to attending 
the meeting and that time is mostly not available for other purposes.  
(Although with sufficient sleep deficit many things are possible...)

Remote participation is by its very nature constrained to somewhat 
tactical (e.g. a document, a wg, a comment) interaction that's difficult 
to map to influence on the organization and its hard to draw 
equivalences with the in-person attendees on "skin in the game".  And 
the lack of in-person participation for any given person could be due to 
any number of circumstances including lack of resources to attend.

So how about making this simple:

Anyone (remote attendee, random person off the street, etc) can put 
their name on a recall petition by writing a check for $250USD (prorated 
for the average annual income of their country of citizenship), and 
supplying that with a redacted copy of their passport page or 
appropriate identity card.    If the recall petition is upheld and the 
person removed, they get their money back.  If not, the IETF drops the 
money in the IETF endowment. They have to sign an affidavit that the 
money is their personal money and they have not been and will not be 
reimbursed by any third party including their employer if any.

So for everyone - the skin in the game to sign a recall petition is an 
equal value - to them.  It has to cost them something personally to put 
the IETF through the pain of a recall.

And not many people would spend $250 equivalent for a DOS attack.

Later, Mike



> Best,
>
> Adrian
>
> *From:*Richard Barnes <[e-mail]>
> *Sent:* 25 October 2019 13:52
> *To:* Eliot Lear <[e-mail]>
> *Cc:* [e-mail]; [e-mail]
> *Subject:* Re: [Eligibility-discuss] Handling the fear of "bogus" 
> recall petitions
>
> I'm puzzled by the focus on meeting attendance and acculturation 
> here.  The former is at best an obsolete metric; the latter is so 
> vague as to be useless.
>
> Let me try to articulate propose a different operating principle here, 
> one effectively of self-determination: A person should have a say in a 
> decision if and only if they are affected by the outcome. I think this 
> principle leads to the right result in the base case, and provides 
> helpful insights in the recall/NOMCOM case.
>
> By "the base case", I mean: Who gets to participate in the development 
> of IETF specifications? While some are affected more than others, IETF 
> technologies have impacts for the whole Internet, so it makes sense 
> that anyone involved in the Internet should have a say -- and 
> nowadays, that's basically anyone.
>
> With regard to NOMCOM and recall, this raises the question of who is 
> affected by the choice of who is on the leadership bodies.  Clearly 
> not everyone; your average user of the Internet has no reason to care 
> who's on the IESG.  Meeting attendees are affected to a degree, since 
> the NOMCOM-appointed leadership is in charge of setting the agenda and 
> the norms for participation. The people who are much more affected by 
> the leadership are those who are actively participating in document 
> production -- people who have authored documents, participated in 
> discussions in meetings, contributed to last calls, chaired WGs, etc.
>
> --Richard
>
> On Fri, Oct 25, 2019 at 6:51 AM Eliot Lear <[e-mail] 
> <mailto:[e-mail]>> wrote:
>
>     Hi Adrian,
>
>     > On 25 Oct 2019, at 12:18, Adrian Farrel <[e-mail]
>     <mailto:[e-mail]>> wrote:
>     >
>     > So, if I might rephrase, you are worried about:
>     > - gaming the system (as previously noted)
>     > - not understanding the IETF culture and attempting
>     >  to make it that which it is not.
>     >
>     > I hope I have that right.
>
>     That’s close enough wording to what I am thinking.
>
>     >
>     > Asides from the fact that that leads to perpetuation and
>     ossification, I think we are agreed that "some level" of
>     established participation is required.
>     >
>     > Now, I would argue that physically attending three IETF meetings
>     does not do much more than show financial support from a sponsor
>     organisation. I might even suggest that there are a few people who
>     have attended a number of IETF meetings who really have no clue
>     how the IETF works: they "vote" on mailing lists; they post
>     individual drafts and are upset that no one converted them to
>     RFCs; they don't read the drafts. So let's not make the barriers
>     for remote participants such that we embarrass ourselves.
>     >
>
>     Yes, we have had all of that.  None of this guarantees clue, and
>     quite honestly, to address your other point, the culture sometimes
>     does have to change. So long as that is a conscious change, that’s
>     fine, but not knowing the culture means it would not be.
>
>
>     > On the other hand, I do agree that we need to see remote
>     participants as, in some sense, full participants before
>     considering that they can start a recall. So we are just arguing
>     about the detail.
>     >
>     > You (it seems to me) are suggesting a large number of potential
>     criteria against which we can measure "involvement". I am looking
>     for a more simple measure just like the 3-of-5 that we apply for
>     physical presence where we don't additionally require co-authoring
>     of I-Ds or some such.
>     >
>     > I think we could arrive at an easy bar such as 5-of-6 when less
>     than 3 have been physical.
>
>     I would be happy if someone attended so much as once, such that
>     the 3/5 would apply. The lengthy criteria was just meant to lower
>     the bar as far as possible, but one can certainly at least start
>     simple.
>
>
>     > And I'm happy to talk about that. But the question of "culture"
>     comes down to this: what is the IETF culture and where is it
>     documented?
>
>     Oh I don’t even think we have to go that far.  So long as someone
>     has an educated perspective, their entitled to decide that for
>     themselves.
>
>     > Do I understand the IETF culture? Do you?
>
>     Yes, we both do.  But our understandings may differ ;-)
>
>     Eliot
>
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