--On Wednesday, 04 May, 2005 17:04 +0200 Brian E Carpenter
<brc@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:
> Please understand the argument that was made strongly while
> RFC 3777 was in WG discussion: there is reason to believe that
> a substantial fraction of the potential candidates would *not*
> volunteer if they were entering a public race. It's hard to
> judge the validity of that argument, but it's certain that
> publishing the names would change the whole process in
> unpredictable ways.
>...
Let me follow this up a bit.
I've been encouraging people to try to sort through reasons and
things that would make it different on another thread, but I
think we have a "choice of potential candidates" problem today.
The IESG and IAB received "very few real choices" reports from
several nomcoms while I was serving there. Possibly things have
gotten better, but I have my doubts.
Whatever the reasons, we don't seem to have enough plausible
candidates to provide reasonable turnover on the IESG (which,
personally, I think would be healthy).
Even assuming that publishing candidate lists would result in
better-quality feedback and permit the Nomcom to make better
choices among plausibly-appropriate candidates, please look at
the other side. There are people in the community who, for
whatever reassons, find the prospect of a "volunteer, have that
public, and then not be selected" process sufficiently painful
to prevent them from volunteering... or certainly from
volunteering more than once or twice. There are also subtle
differences in how one can volunteer that can be expressed in
confidence to the Nomcom: "I don't really want to do this, but
will serve if you conclude that it is important and I'm the best
choice" or "I can't work with X and would accept the position
only if X were not selected" are comments that can be made
today, but which don't show up on public lists. I believe that
many of the people who would semi-volunteer with such conditions
would decline to volunteer at all if their names would go on an
undifferentiated public list.
So, those of you who strongly advocate a public list... What
percentage of the already-too-small potential candidate pool are
you willing to lose? Are you convinced that anyone with
sensitivities or conditions similar to those outlined above
would make a bad AD if selected? Do you think the tradeoffs
are worth it?
john
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