[Gendispatch] draft-rsalz-termlimits

[Barry Leiba <[e-mail]>]

Rich, thanks for bringing this to discussion.

First: I am very strongly *against* hard term limits, as it places
unreasonable limitations on the appointment process.  In a public
voting system, it's antidemocratic, artificially eliminating the
ability to vote for whom one thinks is best.  In our NomCom system, it
restricts the NomCom from considering excellent candidates who have
been doing well and can be expected to continue that way.  And it
would make it impossible for a NomCom to re-appoint an excellent AD
(say), when there are no good alternatives, ending us up with a bad
choice because it's the best the NomCom had to work with.

Second, I am very strongly *for* soft term limit guidance.
Specifically saying that NomComs MUST consider more than two terms to
be atypical and more than three to be truly exceptional, and [etc,
etc, wording like that with further explanation] would absolutely get
my support.  But NomComs *have* to have options to deal with
situations where re-appointing someone for a third (or fourth) term
really *is* the right thing *in this case*.

Third, while I appreciate the desire not to have ADs move straight to
the IAB or vice-versa, and while a one-year gap before making the move
is not unreasonable, the issue is more of a challenge for someone
moving into the IETF Chair role.  Here are two reasons why:

- It's critical for an IETF Chair to have experience as an AD.  And,
while Lars's experience is older and he is doing and will do fine,
we've generally had more recent ADs step into the IETF Chair position.
I would not want to limit the NomCom by saying that they can't appoint
a sitting AD as the next IETF Chair.

- The IETF Chair is only appointed every two years.  An AD who wants
the IETF Chair position would have to step down at least a year ahead,
and an AD whose term is in sync with the IETF Chair appointment would
have to step down at least two years ahead.  Given that a one-term
IETF Chair is likely to get a second term, that could move to four
years ahead.  Now we have an AD who might have been a great choice for
IETF Chair, but has to wait four years -- and be four years away from
the AD experience -- before she will really be considered by the
NomCom (especially if we should also move in the direction of JCK's
proposal).

So *if* we should go in the direction Rich proposes, I would want to
see an exception for IETF Chair appointments.

But, really, I'd much rather see us move toward giving NomComs very
clear and strong guidance on what the community expects, but leave
them the option to do what needs to be done as the situation might
require.

Barry