Subject: Re: [Cfrg] [Eligibility-discuss] "Additional Criteria"

From: Michael StJohns <[email-masked]>
Date: Fri, 31 Jul 2020 17:04:35 -0400

On 7/30/2020 10:34 PM, Ted Lemon wrote:
> On Jul 30, 2020, at 9:17 PM, Michael StJohns <[email-masked] 
> <mailto:[email-masked]>> wrote:
>> How do you propose to handle challenges?  E.g.,  "Why am I not on the 
>> list and what about the three comments I made on that obscure mailing 
>> list a year ago that obviously mattered?"
>
> “That wasn’t an IETF working group mailing list.”

Yes, but for example [email-masked] is an IETF community working 
group mailing list, and [email-masked] is an IETF community mailing list 
- need I go on?

>
>> or "Why is X on the list - they keep making stupid comments.  If I 
>> knew all I had to do was make stupid comments I would have made more."
>
> "X is on the mailing list because the IETF is an open organization and 
> anybody can join our working group mailing lists and attempt to 
> contribute."

Why is X on the list of qualified people - not why is X on the mailing 
list....    in any event, is "+1" a contribution?   Is "this idea is 
stupid for [list of reasons that have been debunked many many many 
times]" a contribution?   If so, I can automate a random +1 or -1 to be 
sent to the list every say 10 topics.

>> Any criteria that anyone proposes that cannot be evaluated in an 
>> objective manner (and ideally from public records automatically by 
>> software) is IMNSHO a non-starter.
>>
> “A message that resulted in the intervention of the sergeant-at-arms 
> or resulted in the Ombudsteam intervening is excluded from consdieration."

The only list that has an SAA is the IETF list - other lists are 
generally managed by the WG chair or some other means. And as Pete 
noted, its going to be rare that anyone from the OT is going to be 
providing public information.

>> If you propose subjective requirements e.g. "participate on the 
>> mailing list to the  point where that would qualify them" you're 
>> going to need someone to decide :the point where that would qualify 
>> them" and lots of someones to handle the appeals and that should be 
>> part of the proposal.  So far I haven't seen that.
>>
> N messages (order of 10?) to a working group mailing list no more than 
> M seconds apart (where M is probably on the order of 10368000) during 
> the past L seconds (where L is probably on the order of 63072000) are 
> required to qualify. The script we ran showed that you had a gap that 
> was too long: you disappeared for 10400000 seconds between April and 
> July of 2020. This isn’t hugely difficult to automate.

And again - I can set up a counter-script to mail to the list to meet 
any published criteria like this.

But regardless, what you miss with your criteria are actual 
contributions: private notes to the WG chair, or back and forths with 
the authors on a document, or, for the GITHUB based WGs, you might miss 
pull requests or comments in the issues trackers.  Or the document that 
the contributor was working on is awaiting an action by the WG chair, by 
the AD, or by the RPC.  I don't find your criteria either useful or all 
that related to the concept of "contributing".

>> With all of these discussions, I've pretty much settled back into 
>> "registered (and attended) for 3 of the last 5 meetings in the mode 
>> for which the meeting is held excluding 107".   It's simple, it shows 
>> at least a little effort to participate, and we've got 109 and 110 to 
>> watch for possible gaming of the system since the next Nomcom won't 
>> be selected until after those two meetings.    I might add in "prove 
>> you're a unique non-virtual human" and I might track the rate of 
>> change for all the organizations in qualified people and report those 
>> statistics with an eye to revisiting the selection process 
>> statistical bias if necessary.
>>
> And when we go back to in-person meetings, what then?
>
>
The phrase was "in the mode for which the meeting is held" - e.g. if its 
an in person meeting, then in-person counts.   Else remote counts.  Note 
that this is not a long term proposal, just one to get us through the 
next Nomcom.

I'm coming to the belief that maybe we need to concentrate more on how 
the Nomcom is selected, and less on who is eligible to be selected.  As 
others have noted - "3 of 5 in person" was rough shorthand for "knows 
the IETF, and is up to date on its needs". Randomly picking people from 
a hat to then having them select from a set of volunteers for each 
position has mostly worked, but the IETF of today is not the IETF of 
even 10 years ago, and it may be time to rethink the process by which we 
select the ADs, Chair and IAB members.   That is obviously a much longer 
discussion.

Assuming we institute protections against sock puppets and virtual 
identities, I would be surprised if taking 3 of 5 from the registered 
attendees (who show up for at least one on-line session) for as long as 
we're virtual is any better or any worse than the results we were 
getting from the in person meetings. Let's pick something simple, and 
revisit it after the next Nomcom is seated.

Later, Mike

---

From: Ted Lemon <[email-masked]>
Date: Fri, 31 Jul 2020 17:19:13 -0400

On Jul 31, 2020, at 5:04 PM, Michael StJohns <[email-masked]> wrote:
> Yes, but for example [email-masked] <mailto:[email-masked]> is an IETF community working group mailing list, and [email-masked] <mailto:[email-masked]> is an IETF community mailing list - need I go on?

Apparently, because I have no idea what your concern is. Do you mean that if people participate in RGs, that doesn’t qualify them for nomcom? Well then either we include RG mailing lists in the set, or we decide that indeed participating in RGs doesn’t qualify you for nomcom. This is just a decision to make—there’s nothing inherently difficult about it.

> Why is X on the list of qualified people - not why is X on the mailing list....    in any event, is "+1" a contribution?   Is "this idea is stupid for [list of reasons that have been debunked many many many times]" a contribution?   If so, I can automate a random +1 or -1 to be sent to the list every say 10 topics.
> 
Yes, you can. If people really want to kill the IETF, they can automate bots to kill the IETF. This is possible now—it just isn’t happening because nobody is motivated to do it. I agree that this is a potential attack surface, but there are things we can do about it: maybe we need to only allow addresses registered in the datatracker? Maybe only addresses registered in the datatracker that are for people who attended online or in person? If we’re so concerned that this is going to happen that we think it’s urgent to prevent it, that would make it a lot harder.

> But regardless, what you miss with your criteria are actual contributions: private notes to the WG chair, or back and forths with the authors on a document, or, for the GITHUB based WGs, you might miss pull requests or comments in the issues trackers.  Or the document that the contributor was working on is awaiting an action by the WG chair, by the AD, or by the RPC.  I don't find your criteria either useful or all that related to the concept of "contributing”.

You know, this is starting to feel like a pissing contest. Yes, what I suggested doesn’t capture every contribution, but it does capture an important type of contribution. Yes, it can be gamed. And the gaming can be mitigated. My concern is that right now we are headed in the direction of valorizing “showed up for the meeting” above “participated on the mailing list” and I’d like to address that. If you think participating on the mailing list doesn’t matter, why are you responding here?

---

From: Richard Outerbridge <[email-masked]>
Date: Sat, 1 Aug 2020 01:03:04 -0400

> On 2020-07-31 (213), at 17:04:35, Michael StJohns <[email-masked]> wrote:
> 
>> On Jul 30, 2020, at 9:17 PM, Michael StJohns <[email-masked] <mailto:[email-masked]>> wrote:
>>> How do you propose to handle challenges?  E.g.,  "Why am I not on the list and what about the three comments I made on that obscure mailing list a year ago that obviously mattered?"
>> 

So far as I’ve been able to discern, IETF meetings are like the reading out of Orders to units on the Board in a game of Diplomacy :)
__outer