See below at @@@
-----Original Message-----
From: John C Klensin [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]
Sent: Friday, September 01, 2006 11:45 AM
To: Eastlake III Donald-LDE008; IETF-Discussion
Subject: RE: Now there seems to be lack of communicaiton here...
--On Thursday, 31 August, 2006 17:30 -0400 Eastlake III
Donald-LDE008 <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
> John,
>
> If the selection method is random, it makes no difference whatsoever
> how the list of nomcom volunteers is ordered. It only matters that the
> numbered list become fixed and be posted before the selection
> information is available. Alphabetic or the order they volunteered or
> any other order is perfectly fine.
Agreed, except that an alphabetic sort is not, by any stretch of the
imagination, random. Phillip's suggestion of using a well-established
hash that is known to give good distributions would work; there are many
other methods that would work. But a number of observable distribution
issues make an alphabetic sort on names unacceptably random if one is
then going to use the ordering for successive samplings/selections.
@@@ I'm not sure why you agree with me and then say the opposite. If it
doesn't matter what the ordering of the nomcom volunteer pool is then it
doesn't matter what the ordering of the nomcom volunteer pool is, and,
in particular, it doesn't matter how random or "biased" it is. The RFC
3797 algorithm takes random inputs and uses them to make successive
uniformly distributed non-repeating selections from a range of integers.
The sole purpose of the published ordered volunteer pool list is to
provide a pre-announced mapping from those integers to the people who
volunteered. If it mattered what that mapping was, then you are not
making uniformly distributed random selections.
@@@ Both RFC 3797 and Phil Hallam-Baker's suggestion use a
well-established hash. (I happen to personally not like the details of
Phil's specific suggestion because of questions related to email address
canonicalization and because it would require publishing email addresses
for all nomcom volunteers.)
I want to stress that, given this mess has occurred, I would find just
about anything the Nomcom Chair decides to do acceptable although I do
not approve of his consulting the IETF Chair (or IAB Chair) in the
matter. But, if we are going to make sure this problem does not occur
in the future, I think we should make the procedure as gaming-proof as
possible. That, to me, implies two requirements going forward:
(1) We get strong randomization of the selection process
@@@ We already have this. See RFC 3797.
(2) We do not redraw the entire Nomcom pool and _never_ do so after
anyone who has discretion has had an opportunity to see the initial list
of Nomcom members. If someone is selected (or
volunteers) and then determined to be ineligible, the people who have
already been selected by the mechanism specified stay selected.
Anything else just has a bad odor whether actual improprieties are
suspected or not.
@@@ It may be possible, with sufficient care, to make vanishingly small
the chance that a nomcom chair discretionary decision would be needed
for this aspect of nomcom selection. But I am not sure that, in the real
world, it is possible to do this for all aspects of nomcom selection.
See Section 5.2 of RFC 3797.
In addition, I am extremely concerned by hints on this list that the
Secretariat's checking procedures ruled people ineligible to volunteer
who had, in fact, attended the correct number of meetings. That, it
seems to me, is a much larger threat to the integrity of the Nomcom
model and perceptions of trust in it than any issue that impacts a
single volunteer or even, within broad limits, the randomization and
Nomcom member selection processes.
@@@ Well, you are welcome to be as concerned as you like, but we live in
an imperfect world. As far as I know, there are usually a few disputes
about the volunteer list, usually in connection with people whose
eligibility the Secretariat doubts. Sometimes they are determined to be
correct and sometimes the Secretariat is determined to be right.
Sometimes the volunteer is confused about the eligibility requirements
or about what their attendance actually was, or has variant versions of
their name, or has changed their name, or ... But this sort of thing
doesn't effect very many people on the volunteer list and is almost
always resolved between the volunteer and the Secretariat before the
list is published.
john
@@@ Thanks,
@@@ Donald
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