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

[Vittorio Bertola <vb@vitaminic.net>]

On Wed, 8 Nov 2000 03:03:55 +0100, you wrote:

>March 31, 2001, I suppose...

Whoops! Still living in the wrong millennium :-)

>On your proposal in general: You are basically suggesting to port
>the offline world's political party system to the net.

Not really. Or better: yes, if members decided to stick together basing
their choice on traditional political views - but I think they don't really
apply to the online world. But they could also decide to form ALCs by
country, or by occupation (and then you'd get something like unions), or by
anything else. *You*, as the ruler of the system, are not deciding how the
members should aggregate. *The members* will choose. Maybe in some regions
they will group by country, and in others by political statements.

>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.

Compromises should be worked out in the At Large Councils (note that you
could have more levels of Councils, if needed, i.e. a world council and then
regional councils and so on). I really can't think of other viable
alternatives: you could work deals out at the Directors' level, but then
you'd get much less democracy and openness. Or you could try to work them
out at the Membership level, but you'd mostly get noise - you cannot have a
day-by-day decision-making entity with 30'000 members, can you?

And again, for what reason they should be "small and closed-door"? The
strength of each Community would lie in the number of members it can
aggregate - so if you're small, you've got no power. If an ALC becomes
closed and "elitaire", most members will simply leave it, and it will die.
You, as a member, are constantly voting with your feet. And if the members
of the ALC are not satisfied with the actions of their representatives in
the Councils, they'd simply change them. By the way, once you elect a
Director, it takes two years to change him if you realize you made an error.
With the intermediate levels it could be much quicker.

>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.

Mmm. I think I got your point. You are talking about *technical*
deliberations. I (though being a computer nerd) am talking about the
*political* deliberations.

In this context, I agree with your comment. We should have WGs, maybe under
the form of mailing lists, to work out technical proposals. WGs could be
chartered, for example, by the At Large Council, and should serve to work
out technically feasible proposals to be considered by the Council.
-- 
.oOo.oOo.oOo.oOo vb.
Vittorio Bertola     <vb@vitaminic.net>    Ph. +39 011 23381220
Vitaminic [The Music Evolution] - Vice President for Technology