Re: [ICANN-EU] Horizontal organization

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

Vittorio Bertola writes:
> On Fri, 18 Aug 2000 17:04:34 +0200, you wrote:
> However, I still feel the need for a low traffic support group for
> the regional At Large Director. Think of this: you are the Director
> and you need to decide whether to support, let's say, the creation
> of the .eu domain, and how. It is a very important decision and you
> want to taste the feelings of the community. If the only instrument
> you have is a forum with 40'000 subscribers, what do you do? You
> post your message, and since this is a hot subject, you get 1000
> different answers the first day, possibly generating threads,
> flames, infinite discussions on silly details and so on (you know,
> you get at least one troll every 50 posts...). Do you read them all?
> And how do you count or group them? How can anyone determine what is
> the consensus in such an environment and if the Director is
> following it or not?

If one has enough time, one might try to reach a consensus by the
RfD/CfV scheme that is used to organize Usenet; 
a director, who follows a NG or ML will probably pick his "trusted"
participants anyway (or rather those that are known to him to make
valuable contributions) and use scoring or something like this to keep
their postings in focus and a Killfile to get rid of Trolls.

As far as "determining if the Director is following [the consensus] or
not" there is no way except reading the minutes of the ICANN meetings
and voting accordingly if the director seeks re-election. 


> On the other hand, if you have a restricted group of 20-25 trusted persons,
> which in turn are trusted by the community, it's easier that the bottom-up
> system works, and that even complex matters can be discussed profitably.

If your two conditions (trusted by the director and trusted by the
community) are fulfilled, this sort of advisory board could indeed be
very useful. But how do you ascertain them?  


> So I'd like to shift the discussion: agreed that a general mailing list for
> all At Large members is good and worth trying, should a smaller support
> group (in fact, quite similar to what this list is now) be constituted? I'd
> like to get comments on this point.

As I have understood, the icann-l ML by Lutz seems to be something
along these lines. Right now I think it very useful to have a tool
where candidates can talk among themsevles; concerning the "advisors
to the director" my first reaction would be: why don't they discuss in
public? 
But ultimately the elected directors will have to decide whether they
see benefits in such an arrangement. Of course we could vote depending
on which stance the candidates take...

regards
 Geza