Gaming the System [Was: AD Sponsorship of draft-moonesamy-recall-rev]

["Adrian Farrel" <[e-mail]>]

Hi Alissa,

Thank you again for your considered thoughts.

I would like to look at one paragraph in your reply:

> The proposal in this draft can also be trivially gamed by a single or
small
> handful of individuals creating a set of 10 email accounts, registering
them
> to participate remotely, and having them join remote sessions. Even if all
> this would result in is a series of recall committees being forced to be
> constituted to deal with recall petitions that get rejected, this could be
a
> significant tax on our community. I think analyzing the countervailing
> benefits of this proposal against this tax or analyzing the costs and
> benefits of doing identity verification to overcome it are important tasks
> that would require the kind of discussion a WG can provide, and also
> require a clear understanding of what the problem statement is.

Pretty much the whole of the IETF consensus process is equally open to such
gaming because all decisions are taken on the mailing list. It might be that
gaining positive consensus is not easily gamed, but objecting to progress
would be easily attacked in this way.

Yet I can only recall two attempts to introduce "sock puppets" to the IETF
consensus process. Both were spotted early and both resulted in minimal
impact on the IETF process. So few attempts in such a long period does not
suggest that this is a major cause for concern.

Additionally, the complete absence of recalls of seated and active
Nomcom-appointed people suggests that either the process remains unlikely to
be executed, or that the current bar to execution is too high to enable the
necessary petitions.

But now (finally?) we can actually debate the content of the draft. The
current revision suggests the following...

   At any time, at least 10 members of the IETF community, may request
   by signed petition (email is acceptable) to the Internet Society
   President the recall of any sitting IAB or IESG member, IETF Trustee
   or IETF LLC Director.  All signatories must have registered to attend
   and have participated physically or remotely at least three out of
   the previous five IETF meetings.

   Each signature must include a full name, email address, and primary
   company or organization affiliation.  No more than two signatories
   may have the same primary affiliation.

   The IETF Secretariat is responsible for confirming that each
   signatory is qualified.  A valid petition must be signed by qualified
   signatories as specified in this section.

I suggest that this means that anyone gaming the system must spend 12 months
doing it (three meetings, well, that is technically eight months and a day)
and that they must go to some trouble to establish identities for their
socks.

As the draft goes on to say

   The risk of
   frivolous recall petitions is mitigated by setting a threshold for
   qualified signatories.

So, perhaps the right question to ask you is, can you suggest a way forward
that would:
- continue the important efforts to increase and enable remote
   participation by sending a message that remote participants
   are strongly valued by the IETF
- increase the protection against the fear of frivolous recall
  petitions without risking the accusation of disenfranchisement
  of or prejudice against remote participants

For your consideration, I would like to offer up part of the discussion that
surrounded the creation of the Ombudsteam. It was suggested that pernicious
or capricious claims of misconduct might be made to the Ombudsteam resulting
in damage to individual's reputation, self-esteem, careers, and
stress-levels. During the discussion of this point it was decided that it
was more important to enable reports of actual incidents than it was to
prevent bogus reports. But it was also decided that the Ombudsteam should
watch very carefully to see whether such false accusations were being made,
and if so to report back so that further changes to the process could be
made.

I would suggest the same ethos applies in this situation. The IESG is in a
good position to work with each Nomcom chair to understand the frequency of
recall petitions and the drain on the community that they cause.
Furthermore, to obtain a view of the balance between successful recalls and
petitions that might be judged frivolous. If the level of mendacious recall
petitions becomes a problem then the IESG could report this to the community
and steps could be taken to further strengthen the protection.

So, my contention is that if a recall petition results in a recall, that was
exceptionally necessary. It is true that we cannot think of a situation
where that would be necessary or desirable, but that is because we have a
good set of people serving on the I*.

I further contend that the desirability and value of a successful recall
outweighs to some extent the harm caused by sock-puppets. There is obviously
a balance, but it does not stand at entirely blocking all risk of frivolous
recall petitions.

Thanks,
Adrian