Re: [ietf-nomcom] The Nominating Committee Process: Eligibility

[S Moonesamy <[e-mail]>]

Hi Dave,
At 10:35 26-06-2013, Dave Crocker wrote:
>Since both of you cited my comments and since they were 
>intentionally extremely narrow, I'll broaden them just a bit:

I should have picked the entire message or provided context.  Sorry 
about that.

>1. There is no reasonable method that can ensure high levels of 
>relevant expertise on Nomcom; the best we can attempt is some sort 
>of highly flawed approximation(s).

Yes.

>2. I think the current, single, simplistic criterion of showing up 
>at 3 recent meetings is massively flawed and guarantees occasionally 
>having nomcoms lacking any meaningful expertise.  And yes, I said guarantees.

Yes.

>3. Having /some/ people chosen by that simplistic criteria has the 
>benefit of genetic variation.  All sorts of unexpected people can 
>show up and participate, offering wildly different 
>perspectives.  That's it's strength and that's it's weakness.  I 
>think there is merit in schemes that display both strengths and 
>weaknesses, but only if both are attended to.

I'll highlight a point "it can be a strength and it can be a 
weakness".  I am not disagreeing btw.

>4. To assure that there is at least some specific expertise amongst 
>voting nomcom members, at least some members of nomcom need to be 
>selected with a method that requires that expertise.  In the case of 
>nomcom, the most important expertise is direct knowledge of how 
>things are actually managed, both well and poorly.  In my view, the 
>nomcoms that I've been around that had a solid amount of that 
>experience had far better evaluation and deliberation processes than 
>those that had less of that experience.

I'll defer to you as you have been part of NomCom.

>5. We currently do nothing that attends to the problem of #2.

Yes.

>6. The proposal that I floated some years ago was to allocate /a 
>portion/ of the nomcom membership to a pool of nomcom volunteers who 
>had a history of principal contribution.  One can debate the details 
>of course, but plausible experience could be RFC author, WG Chair, 
>member of IAB, IESG or IAOC.  That's just an exemplar list; I'm not 
>trying to propose it as /the/ list.

I am not sure whether I read that proposal.

>9. One could easily imagine that previous experience at having been 
>a principal, with continued active participation, but a lack of 
>recent attendance, could mean that a nomcom volunteer is actually a 
>far better nomcom participant than many of those who qualify by the 
>current simplistic criterion.

This one is interesting.  I would say that the above rhymes with the 
word "participatory".  My sense is that you said something which I 
have been unable to explain.

Regards,
S. Moonesamy