Charters, "normal process" versus ISOC, etc. (was: Re

[Margaret Wasserman]

Hi Dave,

At 05:19 PM 5/20/2003 -0700, Dave Crocker wrote:
>I believe what might seem like excessive online discussion about the
>IESG, right now, is coming from the fact that efforts to get independent
>management of the change process are being met with considerable
>resistance... notably from the IESG.

I don't believe that this fairly characterizes the discussion.
I think that there is a big difference between raising
concerns with a proposal and/or suggesting alternatives and
resisting efforts to get independent management of the change
process.

I raised some concerns with John's proposal...  John didn't
claim that his proposal was the only possible compromise, or
that he had perfected it, so I consider it reasonable to
raise concerns.

There seems to be some assumption that, if we open a new
Process AD position, the nomcom will pick someone who has never
served on the IAB or IESG (and is therefore "untainted").  [Of
course, none of us can control the criteria that the Nomcom
uses to select a Process AD, so they could choose a current
sitting IESG or IAB member, and back-fill.  Or, they could
choose a recent IESG member.  But, the assumption seems to
be that they would choose, as Keith put it, a "neophyte".]

I pointed out that this would also have the downside
of having the process run by someone who is new to the
IESG processes.  I've been told that it takes 6+ months
to come up-to-speed in the IESG, and I believe that.

So, we have a situation where there may be a trade-off
between the speed/efficiency of this process and the desire
to have it run by a "neutral" party.  I think that perfectly
reasonable could associate different priorities with these
two properties.

In one of Harald's recent messages, he alluded to a different
possible compromise...

We could suggest that the IESG add another AD to the General
area and keep the work there.  If this was done so that it
added a seat, instead of adding a new "hat" to an existing AD,
we could have one experienced AD and one new appointee running
the General area.

This would also fix other concerns (under discussion on the
poised list) with having a single-AD area run by the IETF chair.

What do folks think of that idea?

Margaret