Re: [ICANN-EU] fyi: What's wrong with ICANN...

[Alexander Svensson <svensson@icannchannel.de>]

Dear Jeanette, dear list readers,

thanks for pointing to the Johnson/Crawford article. 
It raises a central ICANN issue: *Shall ICANN's main goal 
be the consensus?*

In various articles Jeanette Hofmann has pointed out how 
IETF deals with the famous 'rough consensus' and how 'political' 
decisions are viewed. It would be interesting to hear from people 
who actually /participate/ in the ICANN/DNSO process, namely 
Roberto Gaetano and Marc Schneiders (forgive me if I overlooked 
someone). Frankly, it often seems to me there is no consensus 
whatsoever on some important DNSO issues. It's by far easier to 
decide what's off-topic on an IETF mailing list; that's why it's 
by far easier to disturb an ICANN mailing list. It has taken months 
just do decide about the election rules. 
So my question is: Does it make sense to call *only* for a consensus-
building, bottom-up process and how do we deal with that whenever 
this process fails? In fact, the people working against ICANN often 
seem to outnumber the ones working constructively when you measure 
it by presence on the relevant lists. My impression is that the 
current situation often leads to solutions where the ICANN *staff*
has to take important decisions; against their will, I might add.

To be a bit more provocative: If the main goal shall be consensus, 
what do we need elected At Large directors for? We would rather 
need neutral people skilled in crafting such a consensus -- 
arbitrators, if you like.

Again, it would be interesting to hear the candidates' positions
on this central issue (after they have read the article, of course! ;))

Best regards,
/// Alexander

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