Re: [Eligibility-discuss] AD Sponsorship of draft-moonesamy-recall-rev

[Barry Leiba <[e-mail]>]

> > From what I understand, the governance part of the IETF is done by the IETF LLC.
>
> I guess it depends on your interpretation of governance, but as I said in my other mail
> I don’t think the IETF LLC has to do with the IETF’s governance, which is done by the
> community itself.

I agree with Alissa: the aspects of what one might call "governance"
that the LLC is responsible for are the financial and contractual
ones, and that is explicitly designed as "administration" in
everything we say about the LLC.  What I normally consider a
governance role as deals with day-to-day running of the organization
-- leadership to achieve the organization's goals.  The LLC explicitly
does not get involved with that.  There is, of course, a connection
through the finances, but I think there are enough checks to keep that
clean.

> > from Section 2.2: '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’.
>
> People who participate exclusively remotely are disenfranchised from seeking redress in a number
> of ways, not limited to the recall process. If the community views the disenfranchisement of remote
> participants from seeking redress as a problem to be rectified, it would be useful to know that and
> to use it to guide solution discussions.

Again, I agree with Alissa.  SM, I know you had tried at some point to
set up a path for nomcom eligibility for remote participants, and that
didn't happen.  I think that is a much broader, more significant, more
useful way to enfranchise remote participants.  If this effort is an
alternative to that which comes out of not being able to get the
broader issue addressed, then I suggest we look at the broader issue
again instead.  But to know whether that's the approach to take, it's
important to properly and fully understand the reasons we're looking
at this current effort.

> My point is that I believe the key reason the recall process does not get used is because it
> creates reputational risk for the petitioners.

Actually, I quite hope that is not "the key reason".  It's surely a
concern, and we can (and perhaps should) develop ways to mitigate
that.  But as I see it, the *key* reason we have never recalled an AD
or IAB member is that we view it as a very serious thing to do, and
something that should be reserved for only the most egregious
situations.  And, while there have been rumblings in the past about
kicking off a recall, our (correct, as I see it) aversion to using the
process has kept it from actually happening.  *For the most part*, a
bad situation with an AD or IAB member can and should wait the less
than two years it takes to have the next nomcom unseat that member.

I hope we don't move in the direction of turning recalls into more
normal actions than what I describe above.  I'm not averse to
adjusting the process, but in the end I still want it to be fairly
much in the realm of dropping a major bomb.

Barry