Re: Challenge: was Re: Updated Nomcom 2020-2021: Result of random selection process

[Toerless Eckert <[e-mail]>]

On Fri, Jul 10, 2020 at 02:27:59PM -0400, John C Klensin wrote:
> Mike,
> 
> I (somewhat reluctantly for sa few reasons) agree.  Once
> disqualified, always disqualified for that Nomcom.

See my answer to Rich.

> While I'm
> confident that no such thing happened here, it also suggests
> something about which I think the rules are unclear and that we
> might want to work on for the future.

I am sure there are a lot of refinements that can be done, but
this specific case to me looks crystal clear.

> The attack scenario would be: suppose EvilCo [1] wants to get,
> not only two people on the Nomcom but, if possible, two of their
> most skilled committee-manipulators.
>
> In that case, they put
> _many_ people into the Nomcom candidate pool, enough to create,
> not only high odds of getting two positions in the top ten but
> good odds of getting several of slots 11-15 as well.  Then those
> who are selected stop down in favor of of the preferred
> manipulators.

EvilCo needs to invest a lot, like 50% or more of Nocom candidates
to get even 2 folks safely into slot 11-15. and if it has so
many employees but only some of tham have the special degree of
skilled committee-manipulator it still wouldn't help much.

Much easier to give a quick committee-manipulator training to
the two electect nomcom members. And let the skilled committe-manipulators
work on orchestrating official nomcom input. 

> Note that redoing the random draw would not
> effect that scenario and the likelihood that more people in the
> pool would yield more top slots (as sell as more bottom slots of
> course)-- it would just reshuffle the deck.  
> 
> At least statistically, the right solution for this is that, as
> soon as a company gets two people in the top 10, every other
> member of the pool from that company is eliminated from the
> rankings. 

> If one of the people from that company steps down
> (change of affiliation, change of time availability, loss in
> argument with the proverbial truck, ...) or is removed for an
> unrelated reason, the company just loses that second seat
> (nothing both Michael's "1 of 10" arguments and the theory that
> those people are not supposed to be representing the company or
> its interests in any way, that should not make much difference).

I already said my opinion about the IMHO unfair punishment of
company affiliation over all the other type of loyalty 
ecosystems (geo, business communities, government adjacencies) that we
have in the community. Your proposal even further beats up on
employers without any eveidence IMHO of such evilness.

This would be stepping from the theoretical argument of
an EvilCorp over to increasing punishment of large contributors
to the IETF.

If pigs could fly, the would need sun glasses.
Now all pig farmers MUST buy parachutes for their pigs.

> There is a related scenario that we should consider eventually
> but that fortunately did not arise in this case.  It may
> indicate the wisdom or your analysis.  Assume for purposes of
> discussion that, instead of going to work for Huawei, Luigi had
> gone to work for Juniper before or just after the selections
> were announced.  There are already two Juniper employees on the
> list, one of whom ranked lower than Luigi.  So, Luigi announces
> that he has just gone to work for Juniper.  If he didn't
> voluntarily step down, I think that retroactively eliminates
> Tony and takes us to the next (not already eliminated or Juniper
> employee) on the list.  But I'm not sure that is clear.  

I was thinking about Rashed quickly filing a sabattical so as
not to receive money fro Cisco and get back onto the List,
asking NomCom chair to be reinstated and kick of Tal. Not
sure if current rules would allow/prohibit that.

As long as we don't have EvilNomComChair, i wonder how much more
fine-tuning we should do as opposed to leave it up to GoodNomComChair.
> 
> Having not studied the rule carefully in recent weeks, I'm also
> not sure they are clear about what is supposed to happen, if the
> Nomcom were to get well into the interview stage or beyond and a
> voting member were to switch affiliations to a company that
> already had two seats.
> 
> But let's hope we can think about that at our leisure, maybe in
> the eligibility-discuss context, rather than having to wrestle
> with it this year.

I am still for at most 2 candidate from each country,
not just to make a point of spreading the pain of discrimination
beyond large employers, but also because i think it could help
diversity. While nomcom this time is quite diverse from
where people are originally from, there are 4 who live in USA.

> When the Nomcom mechanisms were first being designed, there was
> an implicit assumption that the IETF and the collection of
> people who were likely to volunteer for the Nomcom pool were
> sufficiently diverse that we didn't need special rules for,
> e.g., multiple people from one company: the randomization
> process would work well enough to much more than one person per
> company a vary rare event (and "1 of 10") a good answer to
> almost any question.  As the industry became more concentrated
> we felt a need to at the "no more than two" rule but, I think,
> expected that it would not be exercised often.   Noting that the
> latest list contains two people from each of Cisco, Huawei, and
> Juniper (and with no assumption that they would collaborate in
> any way but one could still be concerned about large-company
> influences in the leadership selection process), we may need to
> some more fundamental thinking about Ncomom selection above and
> beyond random selection from a not-so-random pool.  Again, not
> this year.

This is just like discrimination based on skin-color: Aka:
Its more difficult to figure out other loyalty groups,
so lets only discriminate based on what we can figure out
easily. Hence the question: Why not add discrimination based
on country. We are also tracking that in registrations. easy.
How about people who find the overwhelming influence of people
living in the the USA bad for the IETF ?

Just saying. If we open up this book again it will simply lead
to another road kill by whoever manages to bring the most vocal
crowd to the microphone / mailing list. Already the "me too" voices
in this thread don't give me the impression that everybody was doing
their own sincere analysis of the situation, but jumping to the
opportunity to disciminate further against a specific entity.
Again, just my reading of some of the feedback in the thread.
I hope i am wrong.
> 
> best,
>     john
> 
> [1] There is, AFAIK, no company of that name or inclination
> involved (or with its employees involved) in the IETF today or
> in the past.  But this is all about future planning and one can
> never tell what might happen.
> 
> --On Friday, July 10, 2020 12:04 -0400 Michael StJohns
> <[e-mail]> wrote:
> 
> > Hi -
> > 
> > I hate to do this, but I'm going to be challenging this
> > particular outcome as it isn't strictly following the rules -
> > basically, Luigi may not be replaced by Tal.  He either
> > serves, or if he declines to serve, the next person on the
> > list - not Tal - will be selected.
> > 
> > Here's my reasoning:
> > 
> > After Luigi belatedly indicated his association with Huawei,
> > the defined process results in him remaining on the list but
> > Tal being disqualified (as there being 2 previous Huawei
> > people selected before him).   If Luigi - at a later time -
> > decided he couldn't serve, *_we don't reach back on the list
> > for the previously disqualified people, we look forward_* -
> > e.g. Tal once disqualfied is no longer a candidate for future
> > pulls.  If the next selected (#13 I think) is Huawei, they
> > could serve as Luigi's departure would move the Huawei count
> > back down to 1.
> > 
> > The whole idea of this random draw is that people can't pick
> > and choose to substitute someone else for themselves. 
> > Ideally, we would do a new random number generator for each
> > additional selection rather than continuing down the list to
> > completely eliminate those possibilities, but in the current
> > model, I believe Tal is disqualified and will stay that way.
> > 
> > If Luigi still wants to remove himself, then the next selectee
> > will be the one in the 13th position, not Tal in the
> > disqualified 8th.
> 

-- 
---
[e-mail]