OPEN ISSUE: WG Chair Selection

[John C Klensin]

Spencer,

For perhaps-obvious reasons, sitting IESG members may be a bit 
reluctant to answer this explicitly.  As a variation, let me 
explain why you may not get an answer that is as clear as you 
like.

In this, or any similar volunteer organization, occasions in 
which an AD becomes uncomfortable with WG, or WG Chair, 
performance are fairly common.  On average, I'd guess that 
occurs at least a few times per WG per year, but the tails on 
that distribution are very long.   Normally, depending somewhat 
on the personalities and style of the particular AD and Chair 
involved, that discomfort is followed by some combination of 
advice, encouragement, counselling, education, etc.  If enough 
of those occur enough times, much more direct conversations, 
sometimes followed by threats, enter the equation.  Now, for 
some WG chair personalities, especially in combination with 
particularly forceful ADs, there may be very little perceived 
difference between a "firm and frank exchange of views", 
especially if it occurs with a few accompanying threats, a 
demand for a resignation, or an outright firing.  In other 
combinations of cases, the difference is very great indeed.

Of course, ADs don't have infinite patience, and probably 
shouldn't.  Frequent instances of discomfort or annoyance are as 
likely to lead to chair-removal (maybe more likely) as a few 
seriously bad actions.

To complicate things further, I've observed that most ADs try to 
keep to keep the fact of forcing a Chair out fairly low profile 
and to try to avoid disrupting WGs more than necessary.  So, 
e.g., what might appear to a WG as "adding a co-chair to help 
with the load" might actually be a "get someone new in and up to 
speed so that the disfunctional original chair can be dumped".

There are also situations in which an AD concludes that the 
correct action is to fire a WG, not a chair.  But sometimes that 
results from the conclusion that the chair isn't functioning but 
that no replacement would be likely to function any better. 
Again, you can't generally tell from the outside and that is 
often a good thing (especially when the chair might be perfectly 
appropriate for managing some other WG, under other 
circumstances).

The "WG isn't getting anything done anyway" point that you make 
is important.  It figures prominently in many of these 
decisions, but certainly not all of them.  To take an extreme 
case as an example, suppose we had a WG that is working smoothly 
and effectively and has co-chairs.   One of them is function and 
the other is not.  Some ADs are going to be strongly inclined to 
force the disfunctional Co-chair out as a matter of principle if 
he or she can't be quickly persuaded to start pulling weight and 
contributing usefully.   Other ADs would be inclined to just let 
this go, especially if the functional co-Chair isn't 
complaining, on the "why stir up trouble" or "it isn't broken, 
don't fix it" principles.  I think there aren't any uniformly 
correct answers and the differences mess up the statistics.

Those aren't numbers, but maybe the explanation will help a bit.

      john



--On Tuesday, 20 May, 2003 07:19 -0500 Spencer Dawkins 
<spencer at mcsr-labs.org> wrote:

> I understand your distinction between WG chairs leaving and
> "leaving with assistance".
>
> I've got to ask - how common IS the case where a WG chair is
>
> (1) not performing to the point where s/he should be replaced,
> and (2) not willing to step down?
>
> If this happens once a year, I'd say "tough, let the AD
> announce the impending replacement publically and ask for
> input anyway". It's not like anything is getting done in the
> WG anyway, right?
>...