Subject: Re: [Eligibility-discuss] counting directorate reviews

From: John C Klensin <[email-masked]>
Date: Sun, 05 Jul 2020 22:44:54 -0400

--On Saturday, July 4, 2020 09:01 +1200 Brian E Carpenter
<[email-masked]> wrote:

>...
>> To some extent I think we worry too much about abuse. The
>> existing criteria also created opportunities for abuse. I
>> would like to think that this has not completely corrupted
>> nomcom thus far.
> 
> Right, but by adding on-line actions to the mix, we do create
> a risk of sock puppets managing to qualify themselves, so we
> have to be a little attentive to that.

Brian, I have fairly clear memories of what was claimed at the
time to be a major invasion of sock puppets.  Having later met a
few of them, they were real people.  They just happened to be
people who had not been active in the IETF (partially because
they understood their views would not be well received) and who
agreed about some issues with another individual whose viewed
had definitely  not been well-received.  

So, I have trouble believing this is a problem on which we
should spend energy.  Yes, if I were an individual who really
wanted to be on the Nomcom, I could set up a bunch of fake
identities to increase the odds of at least one of them being
selected.  Even then, noting Michael's comments, 1 of 10
because, if two or more were selected, I can't image a Nomcom
chair who wouldn't notice multiple Nomcom member singing the
same song and figuring out how to take action.  That would leave
the only likely reason I can think of for creating sock puppets
for Nomcom eligibility being to disrupt... and, if one wants to
disrupt the IETF, there are easier and more effective places to
do it.

I remain a bit concerned about a company (or closely-related
group of companies) trying to "pack" the Nomcom in order to get
more sympathetic people into the leadership.  But, while not
having to invest in airfares, hotels, and maybe registration
fees makes that type of effort a tad easier, it really does not
significantly increase the risk (and lack of good mitigation
methods) we have had for the last several years.

best,
  john

---

From: Michael StJohns <[email-masked]>
Date: Mon, 6 Jul 2020 14:09:50 -0400

Hi John - et al.   Top posting here mainly because this isn't directly 
to John's points, but more about how the discussion has been framed.

In a number of messages, the authors were concerned about schemes that 
reduced an individuals probability of being selected for the Nomcom.  I 
submit, that that's the wrong way to be thinking about it.

The goal of the Nomcom is to select qualified members of the various I* 
groups.  Period.   The discussion of how we select Nomcom members (and 
to a smaller extent the eligibility to be on the Nomcom) should not lose 
sight of this point.

Over the years we've had Nomcoms with compositions ranging from 
'everyone on the nomcom has been an IAB, IESG, WG chair, Nomcom chair, 
Nomcom participant' to 'who are these people?' to 'how did company X get 
this many people as voting and liaisons?'.     Some years I've despaired 
of their choices, but it at least a few cases the secondary checks 
provided by the confirming body proved decisive.

My take on the matter is - that assuming we can deal with possible 
gaming scenarios - that a Nomcom consisting of people selected from the 
pool of anyone (with some identifiable and agreeable indication of 
participation) who wants to volunteer is probably not going to be a 
total disaster as long as the confirming bodies are NOT rubber stamping 
the process.

E.g. if you've subscribed to the IETF mailing list for 2 years or more, 
you can volunteer.  This has the benefit of being bog-simple for the 
secretariat to verify.

This comes with a caveat - that we need to deal with the polite fiction 
that every volunteer will be working only for the good of the IETF 
versus for their company or other alignment.  As I've pointed out, the 
statistical reality of the Nomcom selection process means that if an 
organization can get a large percentage of the volunteer pool, it can 
almost be guaranteed to have 2 members of the Nomcom.  In a message back 
around IETF107, I documented that 3-5 larger companies had consistently 
had 50% or more of the voting members.

If you change the eligibility requirements to remove all costs to 
becoming eligible, then you've increased the gaming possibilities.

Let me suggest an easy fix.   Change the size of the voting membership 
to say 15-18 without changing the selection caps.   We've increased the 
number of Nomcom appointed slots substantially since we started this 
process. My guess is that having a few more active members doing 
interviews and research might help with the process.  Figure only 2-3 
organizations will have sufficient volunteers to guarantee 2 members - 
that means 6 of 15 (40%) or 6 of 18 (33%) vs 60% will be from the 
largest companies.

If we start seeing gaming, use historical data to cap the number of 
volunteers from an organization at say a 10% increase per year, or use 
the two stage selection approach I suggested.

John - I'm not so much worried about an individual providing 10s or 100s 
of emails.  If we start seeing things that are suggestive of that, we 
can ask for proof of life (references, a drivers license etc).  I am 
more worried about the institutional case you mention.  Mainly because 
large organizations have the only resource that matters - real people.

Later, Mike

---

From: Ted Lemon <[email-masked]>
Date: Mon, 6 Jul 2020 14:18:07 -0400

On Jul 6, 2020, at 2:09 PM, Michael StJohns <[email-masked]> wrote:
> E.g. if you've subscribed to the IETF mailing list for 2 years or more, you can volunteer.  This has the benefit of being bog-simple for the secretariat to verify.

This would be a poor choice. Anybody who isn’t doing IETF as their full time job doesn’t have time to read this mailing list.  And posting to the mailing list is also a poor metric, because your post count goes up based on your tendency to engage, not based on the usefulness of your engagement. The list is quite unpleasant to interact on, so most people who should in principle interact on it probably don’t. So if we were to use this as an elegibility criteria, I think it would have a really unfortunate impact on the quality of nomcom members, and also probably constrain the membership quite a bit more than it already is.

---

From: Michael Richardson <[email-masked]>
Date: Mon, 06 Jul 2020 14:35:16 -0400

Ted Lemon <[email-masked]> wrote:
    >> E.g. if you've subscribed to the IETF mailing list for 2 years or
    >> more, you can volunteer.  This has the benefit of being bog-simple for
    >> the secretariat to verify.

    > This would be a poor choice. Anybody who isn’t doing IETF as their full
    > time job doesn’t have time to read this mailing list.  And posting to
    > the mailing list is also a poor metric, because your post count goes up
    > based on your tendency to engage, not based on the usefulness of your
    > engagement. The list is quite unpleasant to interact on, so most people
    > who should in principle interact on it probably don’t. So if we were to
    > use this as an elegibility criteria, I think it would have a really
    > unfortunate impact on the quality of nomcom members, and also probably
    > constrain the membership quite a bit more than it already is.

I agree that ietf@ietf is a difficult list to deal with.

Mike, would you accept ietf@ietf plus any WG list?
Or any @ietf.org list?

I am undecided if it's a good idea.
I'm also undecided if 15-18 voting members is a good idea.

But, by "undecided", I mean that :-)
(Not, as my teenager uses "maybe" to mean, "no, but I'm too polite to say so")

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

---

From: Michael StJohns <[email-masked]>
Date: Mon, 6 Jul 2020 15:26:35 -0400

> Mike, would you accept ietf@ietf plus any WG list?

I'd say any organizational list on the IETF side (e.g. there are a 
number of @ietf.org lists that aren't strictly speaking IETF mailing 
lists) - WGs, areas etc.

The whole idea here is to make the volunteer validation as painless as 
possible.

> (Not, as my teenager uses "maybe" to mean, "no, but I'm too polite to say so")

When you get a situation where you might have problems with single votes 
carrying disproportionate weight, one of the simplest ways of mitigating 
the problem is to dilute the vote.   It's much harder for one person 
(voting or not) to unduly influence a larger voting constituency.

10 was an arbitrary number and worked pretty well during the early 
years.  But a lot of the constraints that have crept into the process 
didn't exist then.  For example, during the Nomcom I chaired, I paired 
voting and non-voting members to interview the candidates and that 
worked out exceedingly well.   We don't do that anymore placing more 
work on the voting members and really stretching out the Nomcom process.

Later, Mike

---

From: Ted Lemon <[email-masked]>
Date: Mon, 6 Jul 2020 15:28:23 -0400

On Jul 6, 2020, at 3:26 PM, Michael StJohns <[email-masked]> wrote:
> The whole idea here is to make the volunteer validation as painless as possible.

That’s what got us here in the first place: using a really simple measure that seems to indicate community engagement, knowledge and support.  I don’t think mailing lists would work as well, and 3/5 wasn’t great.

---

From: "Joel M. Halpern" <[email-masked]>
Date: Mon, 6 Jul 2020 17:25:52 -0400

Having been a nomcom chair, and having served as a liaison to nomcom, 
the thought of a chair trying to actually get a nomcom with 15 voting 
members to work well causes me concern.
At first glance increasing the numbers might well seem a good way to 
decrease the risk from rogue members or from overly influential 
liaisons.  But I am not confident that is actually true.  If one has a 
significant number of members whoa re not energetic (which is, it seems 
to me, common, then vocal members can carry the day whether the total 
voting count is large or small.

Yours,
Joel

On 7/6/2020 3:26 PM, Michael StJohns wrote:
>>      > On Jul 6, 2020, at 2:09 PM, Michael StJohns 
>> <[email-masked]> wrote:
>>      >> E.g. if you've subscribed to the IETF mailing list for 2 years or
>>      >> more, you can volunteer.  This has the benefit of being 
>> bog-simple for
>>      >> the secretariat to verify.
>>
>>      > This would be a poor choice. Anybody who isn’t doing IETF as 
>> their full
>>      > time job doesn’t have time to read this mailing list.  And 
>> posting to
>>      > the mailing list is also a poor metric, because your post count 
>> goes up
>>      > based on your tendency to engage, not based on the usefulness 
>> of your
>>      > engagement. The list is quite unpleasant to interact on, so 
>> most people
>>      > who should in principle interact on it probably don’t. So if we 
>> were to
>>      > use this as an elegibility criteria, I think it would have a 
>> really
>>      > unfortunate impact on the quality of nomcom members, and also 
>> probably
>>      > constrain the membership quite a bit more than it already is.
>>

---

From: John C Klensin <[email-masked]>
Date: Mon, 06 Jul 2020 19:38:06 -0400

--On Monday, July 6, 2020 17:25 -0400 "Joel M. Halpern"
<[email-masked]> wrote:

> Having been a nomcom chair, and having served as a liaison to
> nomcom, the thought of a chair trying to actually get a nomcom
> with 15 voting members to work well causes me concern.
> At first glance increasing the numbers might well seem a good
> way to decrease the risk from rogue members or from overly
> influential liaisons.  But I am not confident that is actually
> true.  If one has a significant number of members whoa re not
> energetic (which is, it seems to me, common, then vocal
> members can carry the day whether the total voting count is
> large or small.

And the latter is what concerns me when Michael says the 1 in 10
in not a problem.  If it isn't a problem, then one does not need
an increase in the size of the Nomcom.  in addition to your
Nomcom-specific experience, e, my general experience with the
IETF and other bodies has been that a very vocal member/
participant or two will dominate decision-making if others are
somewhat passive, not energetic, or unwilling to take those
vocal members on.

If a very vocal member or two is a problem, then that 1 of 10
(or 1 or 15 or some other number) is a problem and we should be
somewhat concerned, either about how to keep such people off the
Nomcom if their motives for wanting to serve are other than
dedication to the well-being of the IETF.

best,
   john