Hi Alissa, Thank you again for your considered thoughts. I would like to look at one paragraph in your reply: > The proposal in this draft can also be trivially gamed by a single or small > handful of individuals creating a set of 10 email accounts, registering them > to participate remotely, and having them join remote sessions. Even if all > this would result in is a series of recall committees being forced to be > constituted to deal with recall petitions that get rejected, this could be a > significant tax on our community. I think analyzing the countervailing > benefits of this proposal against this tax or analyzing the costs and > benefits of doing identity verification to overcome it are important tasks > that would require the kind of discussion a WG can provide, and also > require a clear understanding of what the problem statement is. Pretty much the whole of the IETF consensus process is equally open to such gaming because all decisions are taken on the mailing list. It might be that gaining positive consensus is not easily gamed, but objecting to progress would be easily attacked in this way. Yet I can only recall two attempts to introduce "sock puppets" to the IETF consensus process. Both were spotted early and both resulted in minimal impact on the IETF process. So few attempts in such a long period does not suggest that this is a major cause for concern. Additionally, the complete absence of recalls of seated and active Nomcom-appointed people suggests that either the process remains unlikely to be executed, or that the current bar to execution is too high to enable the necessary petitions. But now (finally?) we can actually debate the content of the draft. The current revision suggests the following... At any time, at least 10 members of the IETF community, may request by signed petition (email is acceptable) to the Internet Society President the recall of any sitting IAB or IESG member, IETF Trustee or IETF LLC Director. All signatories must have registered to attend and have participated physically or remotely at least three out of the previous five IETF meetings. Each signature must include a full name, email address, and primary company or organization affiliation. No more than two signatories may have the same primary affiliation. The IETF Secretariat is responsible for confirming that each signatory is qualified. A valid petition must be signed by qualified signatories as specified in this section. I suggest that this means that anyone gaming the system must spend 12 months doing it (three meetings, well, that is technically eight months and a day) and that they must go to some trouble to establish identities for their socks. As the draft goes on to say The risk of frivolous recall petitions is mitigated by setting a threshold for qualified signatories. So, perhaps the right question to ask you is, can you suggest a way forward that would: - continue the important efforts to increase and enable remote participation by sending a message that remote participants are strongly valued by the IETF - increase the protection against the fear of frivolous recall petitions without risking the accusation of disenfranchisement of or prejudice against remote participants For your consideration, I would like to offer up part of the discussion that surrounded the creation of the Ombudsteam. It was suggested that pernicious or capricious claims of misconduct might be made to the Ombudsteam resulting in damage to individual's reputation, self-esteem, careers, and stress-levels. During the discussion of this point it was decided that it was more important to enable reports of actual incidents than it was to prevent bogus reports. But it was also decided that the Ombudsteam should watch very carefully to see whether such false accusations were being made, and if so to report back so that further changes to the process could be made. I would suggest the same ethos applies in this situation. The IESG is in a good position to work with each Nomcom chair to understand the frequency of recall petitions and the drain on the community that they cause. Furthermore, to obtain a view of the balance between successful recalls and petitions that might be judged frivolous. If the level of mendacious recall petitions becomes a problem then the IESG could report this to the community and steps could be taken to further strengthen the protection. So, my contention is that if a recall petition results in a recall, that was exceptionally necessary. It is true that we cannot think of a situation where that would be necessary or desirable, but that is because we have a good set of people serving on the I*. I further contend that the desirability and value of a successful recall outweighs to some extent the harm caused by sock-puppets. There is obviously a balance, but it does not stand at entirely blocking all risk of frivolous recall petitions. Thanks, Adrian
