Re: Diversity of candidates was Re: NomCom 2020 Announcement of Selections

S Moonesamy <sm+ietf@elandsys.com> Fri, 29 January 2021 04:39 UTC

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Date: Thu, 28 Jan 2021 20:14:33 -0800
To: "Salz, Rich" <rsalz=40akamai.com@dmarc.ietf.org>, Adrian Farrel <adrian@olddog.co.uk>, ietf@ietf.org
From: S Moonesamy <sm+ietf@elandsys.com>
Subject: Re: Diversity of candidates was Re: NomCom 2020 Announcement of Selections
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Hi Rich, Adrian,
At 11:14 AM 25-01-2021, Salz, Rich wrote:
>I looked at the 2020 and 2019 candidates, neither were 
>homogeneous.  (I could not look earlier as the website just says 
>"closed" and I couldn't think of an easy mail archive search query 
>to find the list of names.)  There was diversity, even if it didn't 
>really show up in the selections.

Whether the "input" lists is diverse or not depends on one's view of 
what is described as the "community".  There will likely be a change 
in future as Brian and Stephen moved forward some changes to 
"eligibility" which were shot down when I tried that many years ago.

The persons on the outside did not express their views on the 
topic.  One of the expectations for an IESG member [1] is that he/she 
should "nurture new talent to fulfill IETF leadership roles in the 
future".  I doubt that the expectation was fulfilled or else this 
thread would not exist.

Some of the selections were multi-term selections.  One of the 
drawbacks of such selections is that it fosters  a culture in which 
the decision-makers stick to policies even if those policies are working badly.

At 03:28 PM 24-01-2021, Adrian Farrel wrote:
>I think debate has gone back and forwards over the years about the early
>announcement of candidates who have been nominated and/or who have accepted
>nominations. One argument has been that seeing a small set of nominees might
>prompt someone to stand, or that seeing the potential appointees might
>incentivise others to stand. Conversely, the argument can be made that
>seeing the name of someone you think is half-way reasonable is good enough
>reason to not stand. Furthermore, a person might think they stand no chance
>against another candidate and so be disinclined to put their name forward,
>which might suggest not announcing any names until nominations close.

Those issues were discussed as part of the "open secret" list of 
nominees discussion.  Some nominees publicly announced that they were 
putting their name prior to that discussion.

There could be a perception that one has to fit a profile to be a 
viable candidate for selection, e.g. employed by one of the companies 
which usually field nominees.

Regards,
S. Moonesamy

1. There is a tendency for a nominating process discussion to be 
focused on IESG selections even though there is a significant number 
of positions which require other expertise.