--On Thursday, March 28, 2013 18:28 +0100 Carsten Bormann <cabo@xxxxxxx> wrote: > On Mar 27, 2013, at 22:26, David Kessens > <david.kessens@xxxxxxx> wrote: > >> Recently, there has been a lot of discussion in the IETF >> about diversity. > > Is it just me or is the liaison manager for the politically > tempestuous ITU-T relationship really about the worst possible > position to exercise this point on? > > Choose your battles; this one is not a productive one. Carsten, I think there may be two, possibly three, separate issues here. (1) Suppose the IAB had said, borrowing from your words, "this position is so politically tempestuous that we've concluded it would be unwise to appoint anyone unless he or she is now serving in an SG liaison role or has been actively involved in the liaison oversight activities in the last year". That would lead to a small pool, but, speaking from the perspective of someone who would meet that qualification, I'd think it would be reasonable (whether I agree or not). If that were among the IAB's criteria for the appointment, a discussion within and about that small group would be sufficient and a public call for candidates would be a waste of the time of both the community and the IAB except, perhaps, for symbolic purposes. Perhaps that is more or less what happened, in which case all we have is an instance of less-than-ideal communication. (2) Given that the pool is small under any scenario, should there have been a public call for candidate applications? I tend to agree with David about that -- an open call for candidates can only increase the IAB's and the community's confidence that everyone plausible and willing has been considered. On the other hand and referring to the above, if the IAB defined the pool so that a public call would just be window-dressing then I, for one, appreciate their not wasting everyone's time. I also don't have an opinion as to whether they should have posted the criteria they were going to use and issued a public call for comment on them. Again, precisely because this is a sensitive job, that is not an obviously good idea, especially if the comments were likely to explode onto public lists or, in the worst case, an effort by the other body to influence the choice of candidates. (3) If they had issued a public call for candidates, should they have been required to make the names public and ask for community comment on those names? I'm sure that some would argue that they should. You would presumably say "politically tempestuous relationship" and "no". While I would agree with you, I would generalize it and suggest that the IAB should never, or almost never, issue such a list of names and public call for comments about candidates for a liaison position. My reason would be that one doesn't want to encourage second-guessing by the other body, even if as mild as "what does it mean that they sent us Alice instead of Bob", much less efforts by the other body to influence the choice. So, again comparing the apparent handling of the ITU-T and ICANN liaison roles, I think both represent less-than-optimal judgment on the IAB's part, one to expose too little and the other to expose too much. But I don't know all of the facts or the IAB's reasoning and might change my mind if I did. YMMD. john