On Tue, Mar 18, 2008 at 08:24:39AM -0700, Dave Crocker wrote: > > This wasn't about careful wording or reporters getting ahold of the story. > This was about a premature and preemptive decision by the IAB. I quoted Christian's story because it was the kindest towards the IAB. There were of course far uglier spins on the IAB that were running around, and the truth is somewhere between the two, I think. It's not really that important. I quoted it becuase I thought it might be useful to consider the history around the creation of the Nomcom. > A phrase like "serious reorganization" leads folk to miss how small the > changes were, structurally. The existing structure of the IETF was > retained. From the standpoint of organization structure, the changes were > minimal, although of course they had huge impact. > > There were only two changes: > > 1. Decisions previously made by the IAB would now be made by the IESG > > 2. A formal and independent selection process for the IAB and IESG would > be instituted. > > The IAB was retained but careful to avoid anything that looked like an > attempt to exercise power. Over time, if found very useful tasks for > itself. We can dispute how small the changes actually were, but the key point was that IAB had nearly all of its power stripped from it, aside from the power to make recommendations and, and that was moved to the IESG. That was a pretty earth-shaking change to the power hierarchy, even if it was only executed using a few small changes. (As we all know, changing even a few lines of code can make a huge difference in how a program functions.) I suspect, but am not 100% sure, that the very early NOMCOM's, in 1993-1996, probably had their decisions close to rubber-stamped, given how badly the IAB had been slapped down by the events of the July, 1992. Eight years later, right after the turn of the century, it seemed they were exerting themselves more (and I think that was appropriate), and it seems to me that more recently, the pendulum has swung even further to the right. So perhaps it's not surprising that we're all over the map, since if you look at past practice over time we've been all over the map as well. > The question, today, seems to be whether it is moving too far into an > exercise of powers it ought not to have. This isn't anything like the > Boston Tea Party situation -- the organizational change was made at the > IETF in Danville, whereas the offending decision was made in Kobe Japan -- > since it is incremental and is clearly being reviewed as things change. I agree that it's nothing like what happened in July, 1992, and we *are* having this discussion. The question indeed is what is the right level of powers is most appropriate for the IAB; ranging from nearly all powers stripped from it in 1993, to now where it is requesting access to substantially more documents than it had historically, and where a few are aruging that the trust boundary for the Nomcom and the confirming bodies should be the same (i.e., that the confirming bodies get to see all or nearly all of what the Nomcom gets to see.) > Right. The current discussion should try to specify what exactly the > boundaries and requirements for a confirming body are and what input is > reasonable for them to have. And furthermore, give more clarifications about when a confirming body should try to act. I believe, for example, that if a confirming body were to say, "yes, we believe that Person A would do an adequate job, but Person B will do the job 10% better, and we will reject the slate until you select person B", that this would be an abuse of the confirming body's powers. If instead the feedback is, "we believe this person is totally unqualified", or "if you select this person half of the volunteer IETF members in the area will walk off in a huff", that's a very different, and appropriate feedback from the confirming body. In between these two areas, of couse, is a rather large grey area... - Ted _______________________________________________ IETF mailing list IETF@xxxxxxxx https://www.ietf.org/mailman/listinfo/ietf