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Re: [atlarge-discuss] 003 WG-WEB Judyth's Straw Poll



At 15:06 -0400 2002/09/05, Joanna Lane wrote:
>> ---------------
>>
>> RESOLVED THAT the Panel be authorized to transfer webmastering
>> authority for the ICANNatlarge.com Web site to the Web Working
>> Group as a whole, and that said working group be empowered to set
>> up such mailing lists, forums and Web pages as may be needed on
>> receipt of a Panel resolution to that effect.
>>
>> ___ Yes       __X_ No          ___ Abstain
>>
>>
>> Member Name: Joanna Lane
>>
>> ---------------
>
>Comments: Years of working in film and television has taught me that it >will be extremely difficult if not impossible to run this website >effectively on a day to day basis by committee. This is one of the areas on >which Joop and I agree. The hurdles to a consensus decision are >incompatible with providing any kind of timely service, especially news >orientated.

I guess once again I didn't make myself clear. My own background includes theatre, film, TV, print publishing and construction -- all of which are predicated on efficiency, timeliness, and the whole crew having a basic consensus on what they are trying to achieve and who does what when. 

The consensus I was referring to, and which is perfectly possible to achieve within a committee (although it's obviously quicker to have one director make all the decisions and assign the tasks to others) is about guidelines and procedures, not endless debates about logos or who FTPs up the news articles. 

Obviously, one person is charged with the responsibility for making sure tasks are completed on schedule and the Web site works as it should. But in a democratic and voluntary organization, it isn't for any one person --or even three-- to decide on policy.

 What the organization says with its Web site, to its members and to the general public, is a reflection of its mission. That mission is one which the members must decide on collectively, and they also must agree on the broad lines of how that mission will be carried out. We can't just say "the writer will write something, the designer will design it and the webmaster will put the stuff up". 

Furthermore, the technical choices the webmaster would make as an individual may or may not be the best ones for the organization as a whole. The whole point of committees and working groups is to bash the ideas around, state the principles, and then arrive at some kind of agreement on what should be done before one goes ahead and does something that will be unacceptable, impossible to implement properly, far too expensive, or whatever. 

It's also important, especially within an organization like this one, that the webmaster is not going to make those decisions alone and that there are mechanisms in place to ensure that several people are all aware of what has been decided and why, more-or-less able to keep things going if one person decides to leave or gets sick, in a position to hold the webmaster (and writer and designer and anyone else) accountable to the membership.

Witness your anger with Joop for deciding it's inappropriate to release the membership data to you when you asked for it. As you yourself said recently, no one person is supposed to be indispensable ... which the unilateral decision-maker always is, aat least in his or her own mind. 

As I see it, he shouldn't be in a position to monopolize the organization's information, and you as chair of the Panel should not be in a position to give him an order unless it is backed by a resolution of the Panel or the membership. That doesn't mean each and every new link must be the subject of a Panel vote or a committee meeting. It means the membership needs to define the mandate of anyone it elects or appoints to a job (Web related or otherwise) and to create workable structures for ensuring that its collective policy decisions are properly implemented.

>My suggestion is to appoint three individuals, each with clearly defined
>duties. WG-WEB could formulate those job descriptions, solicit volunteers
>and recommend suitable individuals for the roles, then the Panel could
>endorse/ make the final decision and we would all let them get on with the
>job - with the longer term decisions - such as innovative improvements >being made through WG-WEB.

On the other hand, mine is that we begin by recognizing 
1 - why we exist as a group--a desire for democracy and transparency being one of the things we have in common;
2 - that without the willingness and ability to collaborate with other volunteers, the person with the best qualifications is likely to place personal judgment over compliance with collective resolutions;
3 - much as we might like to speed up and simplify everything, there is no way assigning three people the job of deciding who we are, how we operate and how we present ourselves to the world will be conducive to forming a viable organization to give a voice to Internet users.

As a professional nit-picker, I can't help adding
4 - every Web site, like every printed public relations material, needs at the very least to be carefully edited and proofread before the public gets to see it; within every serious organization I know of, somebody in a position of authority (and usually a committee of somebodies if not the Board of Directors itself) must approve the guidelines for the material first and the final results before they are posted.

>To be fair to Joop, he never had any proper design brief, appropriate
>editorial guidance, and he has been doing 3 jobs, which I would describe as
>Webmaster, Web Writer and Web Designer. It is hardly surprising to me that
>it has all gone a little wrong, but putting a committee to work out the day
>to day minutiae, is not the answer IMHO. It would bring something that >ought to be vibrant and innovative to a grinding halt - as a 1000 design >and editorial decisions undergo a procedure equivalent to the election of a
>nation state president. It won't fly.

To be really fair to Joop, he has obviously moved mountains to get the site up and running in the first place, especially in the absence of assistance or guidance. To be fair to everyone, it's early days yet and it's hardly surprising that a group this size will take some time to develop its policies given the range of opinions we encompass.

Still, I'd rather like it if you'd be fair to me, too. In no way did I suggest that the Web WG should be spending their time on the "day
to day minutiae" and stifling all creativity and common sense by voting on every comma and link. I did suggest -- despite the fact that I've been known to coble together an acceptable, correctly-spelled basic Web site with functional links and a half-decent design in an afternoon -- that this organization would do well NOT to set itself up for a situation where decisions are made on-the-fly by individuals and nobody is accountable to anyone when things go wrong.

>To make a start on this problem a while ago, I drafted job descriptions for
>each of the 3 jobs I and posted these to the forum at
>http://www.icannatlarge.com/forum/viewtopic.php?t=245&postdays=0&postorder=asc&start=15 and http://www.fitug.de/atlarge-discuss/0208/msg00038.html
>together with a (rather wordy) design brief which the Panel/ WG-WEB could
>use as a starting point. (I have momentarily mislaid that URL but it >appears a day or so prior to the job descriptions).
>
>My 2 cents.

And mine: obviously, it will be up to the members to express their opinions and determine what approach is most suitable.

Regards,

Judyth


##########################################################
Judyth Mermelstein     "cogito ergo lego ergo cogito..."
Montreal, QC           <espresso@e-scape.net>
##########################################################
"The international community is a work in progress. Many 
strands of cooperation have asserted themselves over the 
years. We must now stitch them into a strong fabric of
community--of international community for an international 
era." --Kofi A. Annan, Secretary-general of the UN and 
recipient of the 2001 Nobel Peace Prize.
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