hi,
I have been thinking about this for a bit and was not sure I would comment.
A while back, a few of my friends were under attack by an ombudsman* in
another group. This Ombudsman had become too much of an insider in the
organization and had lost the objectivity that is key for this role.
Irritation with some people had become personal.
There is an entire literature on the the Ombudsman role. And
professional training.
I did some research and found that this whole notion of being separate
seems critical to the function of the role. Sometimes even reporting to
just the Board that hired can be problematic unless the terms of
reference are strict enough to say that the Board, or whatever authority
is being spoken of, has no authority over the Ombudsman. So I am not
sure how it will work for an IETF member to become a Ombdudsperson
without ceasing to be a regualr particpant to some extent.
Another aspect, other than being other to the organization is time in
the job. While the options seem mixed on this one, it seems that there
is a limited time that an Ombudsman can remain in the job and remain
objective. So if we go ahead with this we should should careful
attention to term limits.
If IETF needs one, and I think this is a good idea in an organization
this wide, is it a role where a professional should be added to the
staff of those supporting the organization?
Alternatively, a while back, at some point when I was last active in the
IETF, there were all sorts of problems that various individuals had with
others. At that time there was a notion going around (never so
formalized as this draft) of having a group of old timers (both without
beards and with - grey beard[les]s?) that could serve as volunteer
advocates for individuals being mistreated or having other such issues.
The advantage of the advocate is that it does not require strict
neutrality, leaving that to the nomcom selected stuckees when issue
actually needs to be escalated.
avri
* forgive me for using the tradional term, all the reading I did on the
role uses this term.