Qualifying for NomCom

["Murray S. Kucherawy" <[e-mail]>]

Yes, this again.

I've refreshed RFC7437bis in the datatracker since we're effectively
between active NomCom periods, so now's a good time to take another look at
this.

For those that didn't follow along last time, the big showstopper for this
draft as I have it now had to do with updating the criteria for qualifying
to serve on the NomCom.  The current draft says:

(1) To qualify, one must have attended three of the last five in-person
meetings, as it's been for a long time now.

(2) This is regularly criticized as selecting for attendees with the
support and budget to travel to the meetings, and possibly excludes people
who make substantial or numerous IETF contributions but participate
remotely more than in person.

We made previous attempts on this list to come up with new criteria given
(2) above, but weren't successful at coming to consensus, so I took them
back out, leaving the text that's there now.  The previous thread:
https://mailarchive.ietf.org/arch/msg/ietf/QHwG1KrQDBK9u0wsfALjPSre-pw

I'd like to take another run at this before the next NomCom really gets
going.  One suggestion I was given here at IETF 95 is to come up with some
system that's worth trying, and not over-engineer it to protect against
gaming or other abuses until such time as such abuse is evident.  It might,
for example, be sufficient defense to empower the NomCom Chair or the IETF
Chair (or both) with a "panic button", making them able to declare that
selection criteria will fall back to what we have now if it looks like the
proposed new qualification system is likely to yield an inappropriate set
of selecting NomCom members.

Comments welcome.

-MSK