[address-policy-wg] WG chair re-selection procedure

On 20 Sep 2014, at 12:14, Nick Hilliard <nick at inex.ie> wrote:

> On 16/09/2014 10:28, Jim Reid wrote:
>> Daniel, this sounds like a nice idea in theory. However it's just not
>> that easy in practice. A "one size fits all" approach simply doesn't
>> work, partly for the reason you hinted at. The requirements for a Chair
>> of this WG are different from those from say NCC Services. Or DNS.
>> Or...
> 
> Jim, this is nonsense.  The candidates will be different but there is no good reason not to have the same or a similar selection process.

It is not nonsense Nick and there are plenty of good reasons why "the same or a similar selection process" is not possible. One of them was in my previous mail. Another was neither the WG Chairs Collective nor the Gang of Four could come up with an over-arching mechanism that got consensus. The best that could be agreed was each WG should choose and document its own open, transparent process. There was consensus on that. If those who were most motivated to fix this issue couldn't find a one-stop solution and reach consensus on it, I fail to see how anyone else could. Feel free to prove me wrong.

Yet another reason is the principle that Gert explained, namely RIPE uses bottom-up governance and policy making, not top-down. Each WG must remain free to decide for itself what works best for that WG. The members of that WG know what's best for that WG and must always be trusted to make that decision for themselves. I hope this key principle remains non-negotiable.

> Firstly, you're voicing an implicit assumption that the WG chairs are responsible for deciding the baseline scope of this policy.

IMO this is not a policy matter. I expect we have to agree to disagree about that Nick.

WG Chairs are responsible for the running of their WGs. Their responsibilities are defined in RIPE542. AFAICT that document did not go through the PDP. Nobody's suggested it should. Yet. It also says nothing about WG Chair selection. Yet. There are plenty of other things that happen in RIPE which do not require formal policies: eg the creation and killing of WGs and Task Forces. IMO, these are a virtue of RIPE, not a "problem" that must be solved by reaching for the PDP and inventing process and procedures. YMMV.

If you wish to put a proposal for a single process here Nick, you are welcome to submit it and have it work its way through the PDP. I doubt this would get consensus (see above) or even get through the PDP any time soon. Meanwhile, we have the far more unacceptable position that few, if any, WGs have an open, transparent and documented process for appointing WG Chairs. That's the immediate concern and we must focus on that more than any other aspect of this issue.

Steps have been taken to address this breakage and it should get sorted out by the end of this year. Let's get that done first and see how it works out. Maybe the WGs will converge on a common mechanism, maybe they won't. If there is convergence, that should be the stage for an existential discussion about whether the converged mechanism merits a formal proposal and an invocation of the PDP. I think we don't need to do that now and it would be most unwelcome to do that or even contemplate doing that.

IMO there is no reason to formulate policy in this area, let alone a policy which has to apply to every WG about how it appoints/rotates/removes its Chair(s). What really matters here is each WG decides for itself how that should be done and that the process chosen is open, transparent and properly documented. It simply doesn't matter how we've arrived at the point where we have consensus on introducing some badly overdue transparency and community accountability. The fact is is we've arrived at that point. Going back to the start and rehashing those earlier discussions all over again seems an exercise in futility because it will almost certainly end up at the same point that's already been reached.

> The RIPE Community has a policy development process for deciding matters of community policy.  Once again, it is being ignored because of top-down decisions which were made in private without reference to the wider RIPE community.

This is utterly false. No top-down decisions have been made. A consensus has been reached and that *is* being discussed with the RIPE community, albeit on a WG-by-WG basis. This should be how things get done in RIPE.

Each WG will get to decide for itself how it selects/changes its Chair(s). That is the epitome of bottom-up decision-making. That selection (of both the procedure to use and the appointment/rotation/removal of future WG Chairs) will also be done in an open, transparent manner. Those are the fundamental principles which underpin everything we do at RIPE. It would be more than unfortunate if this is abandoned.

If a WG is minded to look for a one-stop solution which can then be applied to every WG, it is of course free to do that. That quest is unlikely to succeed however for the reasons I've outlined.

Finally, let me just +1 what Gert just said in reply to you.