--On Sunday, October 28, 2012 13:31 -0400 Eric Burger <eburger-l@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote: > If someone falls off the face of the Earth, and repeated > attempts to contact them using legally recognized methods of > notice fails, and more importantly they have a positive track > record that spans over a decade, we can use our existing > nomcom tools to replace their nomcom-appointed duties. I would > offer that a person in such a position with such demonstrated > dedication would not want us to do otherwise. IMO, Eric's last sentence above is exactly the essence of why I think a lightweight (and different-from-recall) procedure is needed. Suppose we have a long-standing positive contributor, or even someone who took a high-responsibility position in good faith but then discovered that he or she was seriously in over their head. That person responds to conditions beyond our control (and maybe beyond theirs) by disappearing and not responding to attempts to get them to clarify things. Whatever is causing those symptoms, we probably do both the community and the person involved a favor by replacing them and moving forward without making a huge fuss about it. There have to be safeguards, but there don't need to be formal accusations of malfeasance. Coming back to the note from which Eric quoted, none of the above has anything to do with someone who is consistently behaving like a jerk -- whether by participation or non-participation (including active attempts to resist vacancy claims when they aren't doing anything). For those situations, the determination of whether a sufficient level of jerk-like behavior has been achieved to justify expulsion needs to be made by the community, not by irritated fellow members of the affected body. Our presumption is that recall is a perfectly adequate mechanism for that purpose. If it isn't, we should fix it, but it has nothing to do with the case described above. best, john