Re: [ICANN-EU] Horizontal organization

[Geza Giedke <ggiedke@fe-c705.uibk.ac.at>]

Vittorio Bertola writes:
> 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.

the high traffic might be a problem; but at least for NGs there are
efficient ways of dealing with this.

> 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).

Am I wrong to assume that in .it, .fr, .es and all the other countries
there are (as in .de) NGs and MLs concerned with topics relevant to
ICANN and a potential "UN of the Net" ;-)  ??

What seems to be missing at the moment is the supra-national forum;
and IMHO a NG would be even better for this than a ML (but I'll
just be lurking there, most of the time, the opinions of potential
posters are more relevant).
For this forum, English is the only viable choice; some people may
translate and forward interesting postings between the two levels.
 
> >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
> supernational 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. 

I doubt that this kind of party-like structure will evolve soon; but
it may be worth a try

> 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.

that is true to some extent, but on the other hand i feel much more
comfortable voting for someone whose opinions and whose way of arguing
I have been following for a long time in NGs and MLs (as long as I
like these opinions and ways of arguing, that is) as compared to
someone of whom I have only read a short questionnaire and some mails
or someone who was recommended by someone who...

regards
 Geza