Re: Recall process

[Spencer Dawkins at IETF <spencerdawkins.ietf@xxxxxxxxx>]

I'm top posting - how much of this discussion could we short-circuit and conclude by picking a number, and I don't know what number is right, for recall signature eligibility, of 

• people who are Nomcom-eligible, or 
• would be Nomcom-eligible if we counted registered remote participants the same way we count on-site participants?

I know more about "voting" at IEEE 802 than at IETF (for obvious reasons), but ISTM that the concern is that someone might be able to stand up a bunch of sock puppets (or actual humans playing the role of sock puppets), who don't participate in IETF, but can be urged to sign a recall petition (professor with at least 20 students, large customer with at least 20 vendors, what other obvious clumping mechanisms can someone imagine?), maybe just to watch the world burn. 

If people have enough skin in the game to have registered for three out of the past five IETF meetings, as wither onsite or remote participants, that's at least a higher bar than me passing out a recall petition for middle school students to sign, the next time I spend the day talking to several hundred middle school students.  

And if that's not the right proxy for "people who care about the IETF, but don't travel to IETF meetings", what is?

Thanks, and (for at least some of you), travel safely. 

Spencer, the outgoing TSV AD

On Fri, Mar 22, 2019 at 2:07 AM Ted Hardie <ted.ietf@xxxxxxxxx> wrote:

On Thu, Mar 21, 2019 at 12:59 PM Harald Alvestrand <harald@xxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:

Unlike with nomcoms, a recall petition only needs a few signatures -
most people who are active in the IETF know someone who's
nomcom-eligible and could try to convince them to sign.

The bar for initiating a recall is pretty low, given the size of the
nomcom-eligible population.

I disagree that it is low.  As written, the bar excludes all of the people who are currently serving in any nomcom-appointed role (all of the IESG, IAB, IETF LLC, Trustees) and requires that the signatories be diverse in origin:

       All individual and collective qualifications of nominating
       committee eligibility are applicable, including that no more than
       two signatories may have the same primary affiliation.

These are both trade-offs to avoid factional control, but they make the 
effective bar much higher than it would be if it were just 20 people out 
of the active IETF population.  Persuading others to put their names out
as making the request has not been shown to work well, even in cases
where the issues were well known. 

I don't necessarily disagree with where the bar is; I've gone back and forth 
on that over time and may do so again.  But I think the evidence is that it is 
pretty difficult to exercise and I agree that it is even more difficult for active
contributors who could not themselves sign.

Just my two cents,

Ted Hardie