Re: Comments on Composition and Comportment of the IETF Nominating Committee draft

Hi,

On Tue, Jul 7, 2026 at 23:08 Russ Housley <[email protected]> wrote:

> Mallory:
>
>
>
>> It would be worth interrogating the role of community feedback. Obviously
>> this is a unique element and guidance for most hiring processes won’t
>> have much to say about it. If we worry about discrimination in nomcom
>> decision making we should probably worry about it in candidate feedback
>> too. So what would be the fair mitigation? Giving a candidate the chance to
>> rebut a potentially discriminatory feedback comment? Or not mentioning the
>> comment during the interview at all, and giving the nomcom discretion to
>> consider feedback in its own right to supplement its decision?
>>
>>
>> Confidential community feedback to the NomCom is a vital part of the
>> process.
>>
>
> Sure. But, is this process… working? There is no data.
>
>
> In my view, this is an important part of the process, and of course, there
> cannot be data without voiding the confidentiality.
>
>
> (Other than abysmal gender representation.)
>
> Why not conduct the interviews in a standard way and take in feedback as
> supplemental. Without troubling the existence of feedback, which the
> document doesn’t do by the way, I’m here to question whether interviews and
> feedback as two parts of The Process necessarily be intertwined. Literature
> says interviews should be standard across candidates.
>
>
> In my experience that is what is happening.  That is, candidate-specific
> questions are rare, but they provide information that NomCom voting members
> want to make the "hiring" decisions.  I have seen this handled in a very
> respectful and professional manner.
>

Terrific, and therefore documenting that element of hiring comportment
would seem like a worthwhile thing I would think.

Thanks for your perspective, Russ,
-Mallory


> I've made my point.  I'm going to stop now and let other people that have
> served on NomCom speak.
>
> Russ
>
>