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

On 16 Sep 2014, at 10:03, Daniel Baeza (Red y Sistemas TVT) <d.baeza at tvt-datos.es> wrote:

> What I mean with common rules? P.E. For being WG Chair proposed you need some knowledge, being part of the WG for "X" time, know the processes in RIPE, you cant stand up just another one need to promote you....
> 
> Those examples can be valid for all WG since there is no specific questions about it.
> 
> Then, for this WG, should be specific rules about IP Resources, policies, etc...

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...

The WG Chairs Collective has struggled with this issue for a long time and couldn't find a solution. An ad-hoc panel looked at this as well. They couldn't find one either. That suggests there is no magic bullet here, but feel free to come up with one.

So the upshot is each WG will decide for itself how it appoints/removes/rotates its Chairs. Just like how it decides its own charter. This is also consistent with RIPE's bottom-up, consensus-driven decision making. Each WG is or should be in charge of how it runs its business.

BTW, I think it's unwise to put any barriers to becoming a WG Chair other than "having the support of the WG". Anyone who's able and willing to volunteer should not be excluded because they haven't been active the the WG for "long enough" or have a deep enough understanding of RIPE processes. YMMV. The WG will be more than capable of deciding who is the best (or least worst) choice of Chair. Trust them (ie ourselves) to do make that decision.

I think it's also unwise to spend hours debating this meta-issue. This WG exists to make address policy, not to invent processes and procedures. IMO the WG should try the scheme that's been suggested. If it works, fine. We're done. If not, we revisit the issue once there's a clear idea of what (if anything) has gone wrong and how to fix or improve it. We are supposed to be engineers after all.