Re: [ICANN-EU] A Proposal for an Open and Bottom-Up Self-Organization of the Membership

[Thomas Roessler <roessler@does-not-exist.org>]

On 2000-11-07 01:15:56 +0100, Vittorio Bertola wrote:

> Being a self-nominated council, the ALOC should have a mandate
> very limited in time and purpose: to choose a principle for
> membership self-organization, write a set of rules to apply it in
> practice, and have them approved by the membership with a direct
> and general vote, to be held no later than March 31, 2000.

March 31, 2001, I suppose...
             ^


On your proposal in general: You are basically suggesting to port
the offline world's political party system to the net.  While this
does indeed have some appeal in order to generate a reservoir of
individuals for ICANN jobs, and may help to increase public
awareness of the proces, I doubt that it's the ideal model to
generate input for decision-making levels of the structure, such as
an At Large Council like the one you propose, and the BoD.

Certainly, some opinion-building process within such online parties
would be needed.  But where should compromises and deals be found?
Is it reasonable to move the responsibility for working out these to
small, closed-door circles?  I don't think so.

Many of the discussions will be highly influenced by:

- technical arguments
- actual possibilities and limitations of the parties involved and
  concerned with a particular issue (ultra posse nemo tenetur!)

In particular, such discussions may profit by trying to gather
expertise from wide circles - I don't think we'll actually see
thousands at large members joining a discussion on some details of
gTLD policies, or the like.

To me, this still means that we should try to separate the
decision-making level, the selection of the individuals on that
level, and the hard, technical work which provides in put to this
level.

The requirements for these levels are just too different.

-- 
Thomas Roessler                         <roessler@does-not-exist.org>