Subject: MAJOR ISSUE: "Concentration of power"

From: "Hallam-Baker, Phillip" <[email-masked]>
Date: Thu, 26 Jun 2003 17:59:26 -0700

Brian writes:

1. The IAB as an advisory board for WG formation (and in practice for many
major IESG decisions)
2. The appeals process
3. The recall process (never tested, for some reason)
4. Payback time, i.e. the NomCom process.
Now, it's possible we need *more* checks and balances, of course.

The problem with all the above is that they are exclusively top down
approaches. NOMCON is just as top down as the rest of the structure.
Consider the requirements for membership of nomcon, you have to attend two
IETFs and commit to attend a further two - including one likely to be held
abroad at a potentially expensive to attend location and on top commit a
substantial amount of time. If you look at the members of past nomcons you
will see they are mainly existing members of the establishment or pretty
obvious aspirants to join the establishment.

The problem here is that the IAB is appointed in the same way as the IESG
and is just as unaccountable. The great fear of the process designers
appears to have been mob rule, or worse any form of decision making that
would make appointees accountable to a constituency of any sort.

The Nomcon is not a check for the simple reason nobody knows what the
composition will be. The chances that a randomly selected group of people
will do something radical is actually quite slim. It only happened a couple
of years ago because someone got selected for nomcon who was determined to
shake things up. 

The appeals process is for some reason regarded as the nuclear option. I
suspect because one time it was used the IESG took it on itself to censure a
member for having the temerity to make an appeal.

		Phill

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From: Brian E Carpenter <[email-masked]>
Date: Sat, 28 Jun 2003 21:12:42 +0200

Phill,

Firstly I believe that this issue, in somewhat different words, is
covered in the draft.

Secondly, the IETF isn't structured as a democracy. In fact,
doing so is immensely hard since the open door policy means that
companies and special interest groups could (and would) attempt
to stuff any form of one-person one-vote process. (I'm not saying
that is what you are advocating, but it seems to be somewhat implicit
in your words.)

Finally, there have been quite a few appeals. Apellants I can remember
without searching are Dave Crocker, Dan Bernstein, Dave Perkins,
Bill Simpson and Robert Elz. Probably we have been sloppy about 
systematically documenting the appeals, but you can find some of them 
via http://www.iab.org.

   Brian

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From: Melinda Shore <[email-masked]>
Date: Sun, 29 Jun 2003 09:23:38 -0400

> to stuff any form of one-person one-vote process. 

This happens anyway, actually, although obviously it's more
in the form of stuffing the room (or putting 18 authors on a
draft) than it is of bringing in ringers to vote.  Even so,
I think it's far easier to deal with this problem using our
current decision-making process than would be if we went to
a voting system.

Melinda