Subject: Re: [Eligibility-discuss] NomCom eligibility & IETF 107 (fwd) Scott Mansfield: RE: NomCom eligibility & IETF 107

From: Michael Richardson <[email-masked]>
Date: Sun, 29 Mar 2020 18:25:58 -0400

Subject: RE: NomCom eligibility & IETF 107
From: Scott Mansfield <scott.mansfield=[email-masked]>
To: Lars Eggert <[email-masked]>, "Salz, Rich" <[email-masked]>
Cc: Michael Richardson <[email-masked]>, Barry Leiba <[email-masked]>, IETF discussion list <[email-masked]>
Date: Fri, 27 Mar 2020 12:42:01 +0000
List-Id: IETF-Discussion <ietf.ietf.org>

My two cents...

There are many steps to the process related to nomcom participant selection.

The chair along with the secretariat along with the tools team leverage all
the registration and attendance data present.  My experience is that there
are multiple places data about past attendance is pulled.  This leads to
discrepancies in validation of eligibility that requires investigation on a
case-by-case basis. In the end the nomcom team gets a list together and
sends it to the community for review.  During that process, some in the
community do take the time to review the list and provide their opinions on
the list (kudos to the community!).  There are times that the list is
missing people, there are times the list has people that are not eligible
for various reasons.  Once the list is finalized, the randomizer is run and
the people on the list are contacted to determine if they are willing to do
the job.  Keeping in mind that we need to check for disqualifying factors
like affiliations (no more than 2 of the same) and/or if the individual has
decided to run for leadership.  Once the random list is validated, it is
sent to the community for yet another review.  So the list has to go through
another challenge period before the list of volunteers is finalized.

My point is...  There is a lot of community feedback and transparency to the
volunteer selection process.  There are multiple chances for challenge and
comment.  So while I understand the desire to "reward" people that have
attended 3 out of the last 5 face-to-face IETFs meeting (because they would
be more steeped in the culture I reckon), I find the 3 out of 5 face-to-face
meeting issue to be less important (anachronism really) than the "I'm
willing to do the job" criteria.  As more work is done remotely on email
lists, we have seen that people can be effective with remote attendance.  I
value the face-to-face meetings, but I sense a change (virus
notwithstanding) demonstrating the efficacy of hybrid f2f/virtual meetings.
That leads me to the conclusion that getting virtual attendance counted for
nomcom participation a must.

Currently the requirements on a nomcom member are high.  It is STRONGLY
recommended, that if you are on a nomcom that you attend the Summer meeting
and the Fall meeting IN-PERSON and dedicate a serious bulk of your time at
the Fall meeting for interviews and discussion.  There are eMeetings between
Summer and Fall, and if the nomcom doesn't finish, there are eMeetings after
the Fall meeting.   Each nomcom has its own set of issues.  We have had
remote participants that do practically nothing, we have had remote
participants that perform extremely well.  Same can be said for face-to-face
participants.  It is harder on the face-to-face participants in some ways to
include remote participants in the deliberations at a face-to-face meeting,
but WE are the INTERNET community and should be able to figure it out.

My suggestions:
1) Drop the 3/5 face-to-face requirement for the upcoming nomcom (since we
don't really have a process for virtual participation yet)
2) For this upcoming nomcom - take the list of anyone that checked the
"nomcom willing" box from any of the past 5 meetings (103 - 107) - and
follow the usual process described above.
3) When the call is made for nomcom volunteers, send the
criteria/expectations for participation, and the list from step 2
4) Ask the community for feedback on the list as per usual
5) For IETF 108 (and beyond) registration.  Keep asking the question if the
individual is willing and able to do the nomcom job and start tracking
virtual attendance if you really still want to have some kind of 3 out 5
meeting requirement (virtual, hybrid, face-to-face whatever)
6) Rinse, Repeat

-scott.

-----Original Message-----
From: ietf <[email-masked]> On Behalf Of Lars Eggert
Sent: Friday, March 27, 2020 7:53 AM
To: Salz, Rich <rsalz=[email-masked]>
Cc: Michael Richardson <[email-masked]>; Barry Leiba
<[email-masked]>; IETF discussion list <[email-masked]>
Subject: Re: NomCom eligibility & IETF 107

Hi,

On 2020-3-26, at 19:54, Salz, Rich <rsalz=[email-masked]>
wrote:
> I want to get the largest pool of candidates.

so that's a worthwhile goal.

But: My guess is that any fine-tuning here would not make a huge difference
to the size of the pool of people eligible to be considered as voting
members.

The pool that we actually want to maximize is the sub-pool of eligible
people *who volunteer to be considered*. If we can convince more eligible
people to actually volunteer it would have a much more sizable impact
(again, a guess.)

Anyone got data on #eligible vs. #volunteered?

Lars

--
Michael Richardson <[email-masked]>, Sandelman Software Works
 -= IPv6 IoT consulting =-

---

From: Ted Lemon <[email-masked]>
Date: Sun, 29 Mar 2020 18:34:28 -0400

The problem with “willingness to participate” as a sole criterion is that there are plenty of people who are willing to participate because they want to completely change the character of the IETF, rather than because they want to serve the IETF and make it more true to its aspirational goals.  If we don’t place any bar on such people, there is zero cost to them joining, and then whether or not the IETF survives them depends purely on how many of them there are—if 10% of applicants are like this, it’s probably okay (although random chance could go badly wrong).  If it’s 90% of applicants, then there is no hope.

So I think we have to have some criteria for participation that involve a meaningful investment of time and that demonstrate meaningful participation.  I know Brian and some others pooh-poohed the directorate review requirement, and I get why they did, but if we don’t have anything like that, I think we don’t have anything at all.  We can’t scope the pool to only those who have published RFCs recently—that’s too small.   But if the pool is everyone in the world, that’s too big.  Our job is to find a workable compromise between these two extremes.

> On Mar 29, 2020, at 6:25 PM, Michael Richardson <[email-masked]> wrote:
> 
> 
> Date: March 27, 2020 at 8:42:01 AM EDT
> Eligibility-discuss mailing list
> [email-masked]
> https://www.ietf.org/mailman/listinfo/eligibility-discuss

---

From: "Salz, Rich" <[email-masked]>
Date: Mon, 30 Mar 2020 15:30:09 +0000

*   The problem with “willingness to participate” as a sole criterion is that there are plenty of people who are willing to participate because they want to completely change the character of the IETF, rather than because they want to serve the IETF and make it more true to its aspirational goals.

How do you tell the difference?  For the most part, middle-aged American males got us here; do we want to continue that? How do we avoid the IETF equivalent of “regulatory capture” ?

---

From: Ted Lemon <[email-masked]>
Date: Mon, 30 Mar 2020 11:33:46 -0400

On Mar 30, 2020, at 11:30 AM, Salz, Rich <[email-masked]> wrote:
> 
> The problem with “willingness to participate” as a sole criterion is that there are plenty of people who are willing to participate because they want to completely change the character of the IETF, rather than because they want to serve the IETF and make it more true to its aspirational goals.
>  
> 
I think that our nomcom selection policy needs to valorize “rough consensus and running code.” That is not a white male value, but it is an IETF value. Right now neither proposal does this. I’ve been asked to write up a proposal for how I think we could solve this problem; the gating factor is that I have to get it approved before I can publish it.

---

From: Michael Richardson <[email-masked]>
Date: Mon, 30 Mar 2020 13:49:44 -0400

1) I think that we need to have a virtual interim/design-team meeting.
   On the one hand, I see the next month as rather full of other meetings,
   and I'm loath to try to fit something in the next ten days, on the
   other hand, I think that there is some urgency to this.
   We aren't a WG ... do we have a convenor for this list?
   My observation of who is active on this topic is that the people are
   -0400 (eastern), -0700 (pacific) and +13 (NZ).
   https://www.timeanddate.com/worldclock/meetingtime.html?iso=20200330&p1=188&p2=22&p3=224
   I could post a doodle, looks like late afternoon eastern works.

2) A key discussion point is defense against gaming of the system.
   I suggest that any proposal capture that discussion/concern in it's
   Security Considerations.
   I don't think we can come up with a system that is game-proof, but I think
   that we can probably agree about what the cost of gaming a particular
   system is.
   (I note that in the randomized selection criteria for nomcom suggests
   somewhere that if someone can game all the inputs, then they probably are
   so rich and well connected, that they don't need to.  So, like the various
   big physics experiments, we can never say particle X does not exist, but
   rather that it does not exist with mass < X, etc.)

3) A second key discussion point is the extent that we are trying to be more
   inclusive of different patterns of participation, vs that we are trying to
   "simply" find a way to recognize the current ways of particiation, given
   that we are remote.
   Guess what: this looks like a problem statement dispute.

4) There a number of proposals to change how the nomcom is selected from the
   pool, or to change the way the pool is managed during section, or the
   restrict entry to the pool based upon the contents of the pool.
   Some suggest that doing two changes is a bad experiment, while others
   have suggested that not making additional changes is effectively not
   properly controlling the experiment (I'm paraphrasing them)

--
]               Never tell me the odds!                 | ipv6 mesh networks [
]   Michael Richardson, Sandelman Software Works        |    IoT architect   [
]     [email-masked]  http://www.sandelman.ca/        |   ruby on rails    [

---

From: Victor Kuarsingh <[email-masked]>
Date: Mon, 30 Mar 2020 19:10:34 -0400

Michael,

On Sun, Mar 29, 2020 at 6:26 PM Michael Richardson <[email-masked]>
wrote:

> < SNIP >

If we took the proposal of just ignoring the. IETF107 meeting and took the
rest (2 of 4 meetings from IETF103 - IETF106), would that not be valid and
hold closest to the intention of the current process? (understanding we
need to update the process in light of recent events for future Nomcoms).

This would relax the criteria a bit, but keep it closest to what would have
been expected had IETF107 not been a virtual meeting.

I was just thinking that we keep it as simple as possible for now to seat
this Nomcom and give ourselves more time to then make more
substantive changes to the eligibility.  Making other changes (large or
small), are likely to have unintended impacts so I think trying to avoid
that may be best (IMO).

As for those who "checked the box", we can still have folks step up and
volunteer even if they did not, so there is not real loss there.

regards,

Victor K

> ---------- Forwarded message ----------
> From: Michael Richardson <[email-masked]>
> To: [email-masked]
> Cc:
> Bcc:
> Date: Sun, 29 Mar 2020 18:25:58 -0400
> Subject: Re: [Eligibility-discuss] NomCom eligibility & IETF 107 (fwd)
> Scott Mansfield: RE: NomCom eligibility & IETF 107
>
> --

---

From: Ted Lemon <[email-masked]>
Date: Mon, 30 Mar 2020 19:35:56 -0400

On Mar 30, 2020, at 7:10 PM, Victor Kuarsingh <[email-masked]> wrote:
> I was just thinking that we keep it as simple as possible for now to seat this Nomcom and give ourselves more time to then make more substantive changes to the eligibility.  Making other changes (large or small), are likely to have unintended impacts so I think trying to avoid that may be best (IMO).

I agree.  This is not ideal, but we’re opening a really big can of worms, and while I think we should be expeditious about it, trying to rush it done for the 2020 nomcom seems too rushed.

---

From: Michael Richardson <[email-masked]>
Date: Mon, 30 Mar 2020 21:38:13 -0400

> need to update the process in light of recent events for future

The criteria is 3 of 5 right?
If you "ignore" IETF107 (it happened btw, the IESG and IAB got changed), then
you have to change the criteria, which seems a bigger change to me than
deciding that IETF107 and that either nobody was present or some people were present.

    > small), are likely to have unintended impacts so I think trying to avoid

I believe that there won't be more than three people who needed the IETF107
point to qualify for the nomcom.  If we counted IETF107 as happaned, and
nobody was there, then that would be truest to the criteria.

If you want to modify something, then collect the bluesheets from last week
and mark *those* people as having attended.

I'm not gonna fall on a sword, btw.
But, it does affect 2021/2022, and IETF108 is likely to be remote.
This isn't a fix that will be applied only once.

---

From: Victor Kuarsingh <[email-masked]>
Date: Tue, 31 Mar 2020 12:01:11 -0400

Michael,

> nobody was there, then that would be truest to the criteria.
I may have mis-understood what you were intending (after reading your
response).  Just for clarity.

Are you suggesting either of the following?

- (1) We keep 3 out of 5 for IETF103 - 107 and just ignore 107 which means
you really needed 3 out of 4?

- (2) We keep 3 out of 5 for IETF103 - 107 and assume everyone got 107

- (3) We keep 3 out of the 5 IETF103 - 107 and fine a way to assess
"attendance" for 107?

If you are suggesting 1, that is closest to what I proposed (but does raise
the bar post attendance as folks deciding on attendance for those previous
IETF meetings - should they have wanted to be a Nomcom member - could miss
out now that 107 would not have been a way to get a third meeting).

If you are suggesting 2, that would change the definition of "attendance".
Same for (3).

If I totally blundered understanding what you were suggesting, sorry about
that.

As for my first point, making it 2 of 4 (IETF 103 - 106), allows the same
definition which was understood before IETF 107 to hold, maintain the same
bar for that attendance and does not retroactively impact anyone who made
previous attendance decisions for this nomcom.  It just assumes 107
attendance was not possible (which it was not for "in-person") and removes
it from the equation.

I see this as the best way to avoid the most challenges since it would not
exclude anyone who could have attended 107.

regards,

Victor K

---

From: Ted Lemon <[email-masked]>
Date: Tue, 31 Mar 2020 12:16:28 -0400

On Mar 31, 2020, at 12:01 PM, Victor Kuarsingh <[email-masked]> wrote:
> - (1) We keep 3 out of 5 for IETF103 - 107 and just ignore 107 which means you really needed 3 out of 4?
> 
> - (3) We keep 3 out of the 5 IETF103 - 107 and fine a way to assess "attendance" for 107?

Another alternative which is what I thought I’d heard proposed a while back was to simply not count IETF 107, so we’d do IETF 102-106, not 103-107.

---

From: Loa Andersson <[email-masked]>
Date: Wed, 1 Apr 2020 00:25:00 +0800

Ted, et.al.,

On 01/04/2020 00:16, Ted Lemon wrote:
> On Mar 31, 2020, at 12:01 PM, Victor Kuarsingh <[email-masked] 
> <mailto:[email-masked]>> wrote:
> Another alternative which is what I thought I’d heard proposed a while 
> back was to simply not count IETF 107, so we’d do IETF 102-106, not 103-107.

Yes that has been proposed and is the only workable proposal I've seen.

We need to seat the NomCom fairly soon, so lets do 3 out of 5, for 102
to 106.

Once we have the NomCom seated, we have one year to do real work, if we
have continued problems with further cancelled meetings.

/Loa

-- 

Loa Andersson                        email: [email-masked]
Senior MPLS Expert
Bronze Dragon Consulting             phone: +46 739 81 21 64

---

From: Victor Kuarsingh <[email-masked]>
Date: Tue, 31 Mar 2020 12:29:59 -0400

Ted,

That works too, but would in theory change something retroactively.  I am
not opposed, but it may be open to post selection challenge (i.e.
using rules we set after the fact).

regards,

Victor K

---

From: Ted Lemon <[email-masked]>
Date: Tue, 31 Mar 2020 12:30:52 -0400

On Mar 31, 2020, at 12:29 PM, Victor Kuarsingh <[email-masked]> wrote:
> That works too, but would in theory change something retroactively.  I am not opposed, but it may be open to post selection challenge (i.e. using rules we set after the fact).  

I don’t think it changes anything.  The last five in-person meetings were IETFs 102-107.

---

From: Victor Kuarsingh <[email-masked]>
Date: Tue, 31 Mar 2020 12:35:30 -0400

Loa,

> We need to seat the NomCom fairly soon, so lets do 3 out of 5, for 102

Sorry to drag this out, but in this proposal, someone may not have attended
IETF 102 in person, gone to 2 of the next 4 IETFs and planned on attending
IETF 107 and would therefore be excluded.

If we made it 2 or 4 and ignored IETF 107, there it would be been in line
with any attendance plans and decisions one would have made.  It does lower
the bar (2 of 4 vs 3 of 5), but does not raise it or change the rules.  We
would fault on the side of inclusion vs. exclusion in this case.

This would also us to seat the Nomcom quickly since the only adjustment is
we ignore IETF107.

I fear that including IETF meetings into the equation retroactively can
lead to challenge (as noted).

regards,

Victor K

---

From: "Salz, Rich" <[email-masked]>
Date: Tue, 31 Mar 2020 16:38:47 +0000

107 was a meeting (the new leadership was seated) and it wasn’t (IESG said the meeting was cancelled, https://mailarchive.ietf.org/arch/msg/ietf-announce/XenAlx4Nw6Jmg69QpXRUOwbzsXY/)

---

From: Victor Kuarsingh <[email-masked]>
Date: Tue, 31 Mar 2020 12:41:41 -0400

Ted,

> I don’t think it changes anything.  The last five in-person meetings were

Well it does make IETF102 a consideration vs. IETF107.  How relevant that
is to folks I am not 100% sure.  It's a valid option which may have missed
IETF102 but planned to attend IETF107 in-person and so happened dto want to
be on Nomcom  (however unlikely that would be).

regards,

Victor K

---

From: Ted Lemon <[email-masked]>
Date: Tue, 31 Mar 2020 13:25:01 -0400

I don’t see how this helps with inclusion. We simply have no way to account for IETF 107 attendance. There’s no magical rule we can come up with that accomplishes that. 

We could have a double rule: if you attended 3 of IETFs 103-107, treating remote as in-person for 107, or you attend 3 of IETFs 102-107, then you are qualified. 

This errs on the side of inclusivity, but doesn’t follow the rules. 

> On Mar 31, 2020, at 12:35, Victor Kuarsingh <[email-masked]> wrote:
> 
> 
> Loa,
> 
> 
> 
> Sorry to drag this out, but in this proposal, someone may not have attended IETF 102 in person, gone to 2 of the next 4 IETFs and planned on attending IETF 107 and would therefore be excluded.
> 
> If we made it 2 or 4 and ignored IETF 107, there it would be been in line with any attendance plans and decisions one would have made.  It does lower the bar (2 of 4 vs 3 of 5), but does not raise it or change the rules.  We would fault on the side of inclusion vs. exclusion in this case. 
> 
> This would also us to seat the Nomcom quickly since the only adjustment is we ignore IETF107.   
> 
> I fear that including IETF meetings into the equation retroactively can lead to challenge (as noted). 
> 
> regards,
> 
> Victor K
>  
>>

---

From: "Salz, Rich" <[email-masked]>
Date: Tue, 31 Mar 2020 17:32:14 +0000

> We simply have no way to account for IETF 107 attendance.

Exactly.  Looked at one way, it didn’t happen (IESG statement).  Looked at another way, it did happen (IESG/IAB seated).
As I said, it’s a Heisenmeeting.

---

From: Brian E Carpenter <[email-masked]>
Date: Wed, 1 Apr 2020 10:42:31 +1300

Why is thread even on eligibility-discuss rather than ietf@ ?

Regards
   Brian

On 01-Apr-20 06:32, Salz, Rich wrote:
> *>* We simply have no way to account for IETF 107 attendance.
> 
>  
>

---

From: Brian E Carpenter <[email-masked]>
Date: Wed, 1 Apr 2020 10:56:15 +1300

>    I could post a doodle, looks like late afternoon eastern works.

We're not a WG and don't have a chair, so honestly I'm not clear how
a meeting would work.

>    rather that it does not exist with mass < X, etc.)

I'm not sure I'd put in Sec Cons rather than a separate section, but yes,
some gameability considerations would be a good idea.

>    Guess what: this looks like a problem statement dispute.

I think we can expect at least 2 years of perturbation. Certainly NZ is expecting
at least 2 years disruption to the tourist industry, and I don't see why the
conference industry will be different. It also seems to me that we're highly
unlikely to revert to three meetings a year, ever. And all that seems way out
of scope for this list, as is the 2020 NomCom. I think a two-year experiment with
eligibility criteria is appropriate, precisely because we don't even know what
the future pattern of participation will be. So there isn't much point in thinking
about the long term yet.

>    properly controlling the experiment (I'm paraphrasing them)

Yes, experimenting with the real world when it keeps changing is tricky.

    Brian

---

From: Victor Kuarsingh <[email-masked]>
Date: Tue, 31 Mar 2020 20:12:54 -0400

Should we request a charter to deal with this?

regards,

Victor K