John, Sorry to pick out a nugget from the middle of a very long message, but On 12/30/06, John C Klensin <john-ietf@xxxxxxx> wrote:
... What we don't need is more rigid rules that either try to anticipate every circumstance ...
This is something that I feel very strongly about. We write rules with wiggle room, because it's impossible to anticipate every situation and important not to overconstrain the leadership in order to allow them to show ... leadership. We then look at the rules and say "Oh horrors! Someone could use bad judgement and make something bad happen!" and try to write more rules to prevent that. I think that instead we should try to select leadership that won't use bad judgement or will be able to understand when it's pointed out that they are.
I think that long terms on the IESG tend to breed detachment from the community and a tendency to put IESG judgment ahead of that of the community and I don't think we can solve that with more rules about IESG behavior.
As the current IESG member with the longest term, I agree with this, and that fed into my decision to not stand for the position again. I think a young [in terms-of-service] IESG is more likely to be a healthy IESG. Bill _______________________________________________ Ietf@xxxxxxxx https://www1.ietf.org/mailman/listinfo/ietf