You raise the question of whether we can afford the loss of candidates from those people not willing to be seen as losing. I will admit to not being sure I understand the driver for people who both have that concern and could do the job of AD. (I can see it for IAB membership.) I can't swear that we won't lose one or two vialbe candidates, but I tend to doubt it.
You also ask about the nuances. The details / constraints / parameters for a volunteer would, I think, still be confidential. I can't see any problem with that information being only in the hands of the nomcom. The public will not be able to tell that the nomcom might have chosen a different person but for some constraints. (Heck, that is probably always the case.)
There is one reason I have heard occasionally that I wonder about. If the list is made public, will this cause public second guessing based on insufficient information after the results are announced. That, I think, would be a serious problem.
And there is some risk (small, I think) of people pushing others to endorse them. This would seem easier with a public list, because the nomcom is not left wondering why they got the supportive email.
On balance, I think we would be significantly better off with a public list because of the ability to get much wider feedback.
Yours, Joel
At 09:18 AM 5/7/2005, John C Klensin wrote:
... initial discussion of publishing candidates elided ...
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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