On 31 Mar 2020, at 12:56, Alissa Cooper wrote:
My individual opinion is below.
Understood.
I think what you suggest is a recipe for either delegitimizing the IETF or causing it to enter a state of dysfunction. It assumes there will be consensus at the end of four weeks.
It does not assume that, and I don't think you've actually run through all of the reasonable outcomes. First of all, this has been discussed for two weeks already. I think the IESG has a pretty good idea of the leaning of the community and can draft something that has a high likelihood of achieving rough consensus. (And remember, rough is good enough.) But let's assume the worst case scenario you pose:
But if the community can never reach consensus, then either the nomcom chair will have to figure this out on his or her own
A bad choice for the reasons you mention below. The NomCom chair should not be put in that position.
or the nomcom can never be seated
A non-choice. That's simply "The IETF self-destructs". We all agree, not an acceptable outcome.
or the IESG will have to illegitimately declare consensus, as Barry implied.
No. At the point where the community really does deadlock and a decision needs to be made, the IESG then does have an emergency on its hands. It then says, "The community is not coming to consensus about how to deal with 107. A choice needs to be made. This regards a BCP, so it's left to us, so we are going to take what we read as the closest to IETF consensus, add our best judgement as needed, and publish it as an IESG statement. Let the chips fall where they may." In that scenario, the IESG will have done exactly what it proposed now, with the difference being that it's now clear that the community could not come to a rough consensus, so the IESG had to make a call. Yes, that could be appealed, or cause upset, but those are the situations where the IESG correctly has to exercise authority and be comfortable with, "Yes, we might all be recalled, but this was the right thing to do."
This way you have given the consensus process a chance to work out the problem, but catch it if it falls. The way the IESG has proposed to move forward undermines the consensus process and makes an executive decision, a much worse outcome.
We made much larger changes to the nomcom process a couple of years ago...
I'm inclined not to have a discussion about the merit of that in this context.
Being so rule-bound that we jeopardize the mere ability to renew the leadership in the future seems clearly to be the wrong choice.
Nothing I have proposed jeopardizes the ability to renew leadership. It's just giving the community a chance to do the right thing.
pr -- Pete Resnick https://www.episteme.net/ All connections to the world are tenuous at best
