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Positive Work Environment Community Group
https://www.w3.org/community/pwe/
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[ombuds] disqualifying conflicts of interest #199

Open samuelweiler opened 2 years ago

samuelweiler commented 2 years ago

Re: the Ombuds job description:

Are there any strictly disqualifying conflicts of interest? (e.g. being part of the current Team, AB, TAG, or then-existing leadership body?) Either way, should the appointment of Ombudspeople be guided so as to assure that there are a diversity of CoIs?

Suggestion: it is acceptable to leave this to the discretion of the Ombudsperson-appointer. This is inspired by https://www.rfc-editor.org/rfc/rfc7776.html#section-3, which provides no hard constraint and merely guides: "The [Ombudsperson appointer] is encouraged to appoint at least some of the Ombudsteam from within the IETF community."

If we do have strict disqualifiers, I might consider disqualifying (only) the current judges of consensus in the standards process (now those would be the Director and the Director's delegates, personally; in the future it might be a different group) and perhaps those with notable special powers (e.g. the CEO and COO, by virtue of their roles in https://www.w3.org/Guide/process/banning.html). Note that RFC7776 does not disqualify the IETF equivalent of those, though there are some appeals paths that go through the normal consensus-judging body.

TzviyaSiegman commented 2 years ago

@samuelweiler @sheilamoussavi I think we include this in the (not public) interview guidance. I agree that information about who is /is not qualified from a conflict of interest perspective should be added to the job description.