On 7/21/24 20:08, Andrew Sullivan wrote:
Except that the whole nomcom selection process is designed to be transparent and resistant to rigging, so having a private discussion seems iffy for that reason.
I could not disagree more with that conclusion. While much of the selection process is intended to be transparent, the discretion of the Chair is pretty broad in practically everything touching on the entire Nomcom process.
There are two similar but distinct concerns: One is making it hard for things to be explicitly rigged. Another is to provide no reason for observers to be suspicious and undermine community trust in the process. The latter is a valid concern even if the chair always uses their discretion with the best interests of the Internet and IETF in mind, as I hope they do.
But I agree that it's tricky to decide fairly and definitively whether two participants are in fact independent, especially since there are so many ways for participants to be working in service of the same organization even when they're not both employees of that organization.
Keith
