--On Thursday, October 7, 2021 18:17 +0200 Carsten Bormann <cabo@xxxxxxx> wrote: > On 2021-10-07, at 16:51, Salz, Rich > <rsalz=40akamai.com@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote: >> >> I would say no person can serve in a nomcom-chosen position >> for more than four years in a row; there must be at least a >> one-year gap. No exemptions. > > I don't think we can afford discarding all these potential > Human Resources, if only for a year. Hmm. Carsten, let me try suggesting almost the same thing Rich did, but from a different perspective. It is a real advantage, both to the people who serve and to the IETF community and the Internet, if people in leadership roles remain actively familiar with what it takes to get substantive work done in the IETF rather than developing a "management" perspective and losing both the recent memory of that experience and a bottom-up understanding of the impact of whatever changes have occurred. I think it would be better for the community (and, actually, for the sanity of the individuals) if someone who had served in an IESG or IAB position [1] for a couple of terms take a year or two as a participant (ideally, not even as a WG Chair), even if they were returned to that, or some other position later. > Instead, the spirit of this could be developed as IETF > consensus and communicated to the noncom. They would still > know when to stick with that simplistic rule and when it > doesn't work. Do the right thing. You (and others) may disagree, but I think the general principle that multiple terms (N > 2) are generally a bad idea has gotten at least rough consensus and been communicated to Nomcoms multiples times. The fact that we are having this discussion (again) suggests that has not been very effective. And, that said, I still believe that some variation of what was proposed years ago (and which the IESG refused to consider [2]) would be a good idea. The general idea was that incumbents who were willing to serve another term would be considered by the Nomcom even before the general call for candidates. The Nomcom would be advised that a second term is usually A Good Thing unless there were problems and that further terms often became problems. The Nomcom would solicit feedback from the community about, e.g., performance and could then decide "return" (in which case there would never be a general call for that position). Or they could decide "enough; no more now" or perhaps "maybe". They would run the usual process for all remaining open positions. There would obviously be some side effects, starting with making it difficult for an incumbent to both "run" for their existing position and to seek another one. The community would have to decide whether that was bad and, if so, do something about it. And, if there are advantages to "running" against a first-term incumbent who has done a good job "for practice", they would largely disappear. On the other hand, it would allow the Nomcom to spend more of its time on the hard cases rather than deciding whether an alternate candidate might be slightly better than a one-term incumbent who has done a good job. best, john [1] I am undecided about Nomcom-selected positions other than the IAB and IESG. It is possible that different considerations might apply. [2] There is arguably a fundamental conflict when the IESG proposes or decides about suggested procedural changes that would affect how the IESG works or how its members are selected. On the one hand, ADs presumably have more intimate familiarity with the issues than anyone else. On the other, they volunteered and were selected with assumptions about how things work, how (or if) they are held accountable, whether it is easy or hard for them to get additional terms if they want them, and so on. And the decisions to which that leads may or may not be in the best interests of the community and the Internet even if they are in the best interests of the sitting IESG and people who are very much like them.
