Re: [ICANN-EU] Horizontal organization

[Vittorio Bertola <vb@vitaminic.net>]

On Fri, 18 Aug 2000 16:07:29 +0200, you wrote:

>I support the intent of horizontal pan-european organization of
>netizens. But I think it should be *avoided* to break this down in
>local communities! Isn't this what we have right now? 
>If it is really difficult to set up a mailing list for 10^4-10^5
>subscribers, then I'd suggest a newsgroup.

It is not a technical problem - it's a problem of language, and of traffic.
A list or newsgroup with 100-150 active and discussing participants easily
generates 500-1000 posts per day - which are impossible to manage if you
don't have some hours per day to dedicate to it. On a basis of 40000
members, I guess that those who would like to say their opinion would be
even more.

However, we could try to set up two mailing lists: a closed list for the
"regional coordination" between the top candidates as I was proposing, and a
list open to all members in Europe for general discussion. If then the
latter gets too crowded, we can think about how to split it. But please keep
in mind that many people in Europe are not comfortable with English, so a
single mailing list would cut them out. Also, in many cases there are
national issues that deserve to be discussed and should not bother the whole
community (i.e. the policy adopted by the national registry - it seems
natural to me that the national At Large community will discuss about it).

>I think we need a forum frequented by people from all countries. 
>Concerning elections: the advantage that German speaking candidates
>have at the moment is that they are well known to many @Large members
>thanks to NGs and MLs. If more EU-wide fora existed, this sort of
>national advantage would be reduced.

I agree with this, but I think that this will be achieved by having
supernatural groups of candidates sharing a common charter, so that they
have a local presence everywhere and they can preselect and present a few
top candidates everywhere. It is not reasonable to think that 80 candidates
can get the attention of the whole community. I think that it would be much
easier for the voters to cast their vote non-nationallywise if they had only
a short list of persons to evaluate.
-- 
.oOo.oOo.oOo.oOo vb.
Vittorio Bertola     <vb@vitaminic.net>    Ph. +39 011 23381220
Vitaminic [The Music Evolution] - Vice President for Technology