I'm prefer to find a solution without limits on terms.

What we do in the Open Source WG is to make it clear that we could have 3 chairs, but are only 2 at this time. I hope this would encourage someone to step up without having to have an existing chair stepping down and make it easier for someone
to step up (But we also try to make it clear that they could ask to replace an existing chair if they feel like an existing chair
needs to be gone).
(My assumption is that if we ever end up with 3 chairs then one of them would probably step down some time afterwards to
make an "empty slot" available again, but this is not in any rules)

So far, all our calls in the (shorter) history of the OS WG had nobody stepping up and show any interest to join or replace a chair.


On Feb 12 2021, at 11:14 am, Shane Kerr <shane@time-travellers.org> wrote:
Mirjam,

On 11/02/2021 13.54, Mirjam Kuehne wrote:
>
> I think we all agree that the overall goal is to have a good and diverse
> set of WG chairs and we want to work with all WGs to facilitate that.
>
> Following the recommendations from the Accountability Task Force, we've
> started looking at the chair selection criteria of all RIPE Working
> Groups. Currently most WGs have terms or regular calls for nominations
> defined as part of their selection criteria. We will continue this review.

Thanks for this. It's a bit wonky but I appreciate the review effort here.

In the light of the discussion about chair selection and term limits, I
thought that I would mention that the RIPE DNS working group already has
these limits.

We have 3 chairs, and each chair serves 3 years. Every year one of the
positions is made available.

With this system there is a chance every year for anyone interested in
serving as a chair to put themselves forward.

An existing chair may volunteer again at the end of their term, one
time, so serving a total of 6 years.

We started using this process 6 years ago, so this year we will have at
least one new chair.

Dave sent a good e-mail last year which documents a bit of the history,
plus each individual chair's period:

https://www.ripe.net/ripe/mail/archives/dns-wg/2020-October/003768.html

Cheers,

--
Shane