[members-discuss] [GM] Requirements and Expectations for Board Members and Candidates

Hi,

> Personally I would find it discriminating, if a good candidate would be disqualified, just by its country of origin, because someone in the EB happens to be already from the same country. (by birth or where he/she resides. ) 

I agree, I don’t think it makes sense to limit this up-front. If the membership thinks there is a bias in the board composition they can vote for other candidates. I think this would only become a problem if some subset of the membership would have so many members that they can out-vote all other subsets and capture the board. But in that case we have other problems, and those subsets aren’t necessarily geographic.

> Also removing the pool of WG Chairs is something I would be strongly against ... A lot of current / former board members have been WG Chairs .. They have the faith of the community, they know the community and that is why they get elected for the EB position ... 

Very strong +1 on this one. Blocking the most active members of our community from volunteering for the board would be a big mistake…

On the bigger topic of discussing options on EB candidate requirements, I am happy that the board is having research done on the topic. I was at the APNIC meeting at their latest election, and there was serious concern about capture of the board (see https://www.theregister.com/2023/02/15/apnic_election_controversy/ for the fireworks). I’m sad that Remco left the room, as I think his input would have been valuable. In the end, as the minutes confirm, this is a matter for the membership to decide on, and as long as that is the case the board investigating it and providing input to the membership is welcome in my opinion.

One note: I have seen in the past that votes on NCC business have been “all or nothing” where the membership had the choice to either accept a proposal including all the bad bits, or reject it completely. Such a style of vote would  be bad in my opinion on a sensitive topic such as this. While writing a proposal by committee is a guaranteed failure, I would encourage the board to discuss it and get rough consensus before bringing it to a vote. The current discussion about the charging scheme is certainly a step in the right direction.

Cheers!
Sander