Re: [ICANN-EU] Horizontal organization

[Thomas Roessler <roessler@does-not-exist.org>]

On 2000-08-21 17:51:40 +0200, Vittorio Bertola wrote:

> The latter could be considered, with the number of endorsements
> they had when they withdrew. 

This doesn't work since you don't know how endorsements evolve in
time.

> About the former, I'm sure that there are some people who thought
> that way, but, having 74 candidates in the list, it seems
> difficult to me to conclude that many people decided not to
> candidate to reduce crowding :)

To me, reduction of crowding is less important than recruiting
expertise.  I don't want to offend anyone, but I'm sure that there
is quite a bit of expertise available from non-candidates; there are
even candidates I wouldn't ever want to see in an advisory board.

>>Sorry, but this should _absolutely_ _not_ be the job of any
>>closed "board".

> I've thought at it more deeply, and it seems to me that there are two
> different steps in what we want to do:
> 1) put together the best possible proposal
> 2) make this proposal as much credible as possible
> 
> Closing the discussion could affect 1) negatively, but would affect 2)
> positively. 

How this?  A proposal which is of lower quality won't gain more
credibility.

> One thing is to go to ICANN and say "Hi, we are a self-nominated
> group of At Large members, here is our proposal", and another is
> to say "Hi, we are a provenly representative subset of the At
> Large community, here is our proposal". Ignoring us in the second
> case would be more difficult, I think.

Oh, you mean like in "We proposed ourselves as candidates, and got
some endorsements due to quantum fluctuations.  BTW, we are not the
candidates who made it onto the ballot."?  

Sorry for being sarcastic here, but I don't believe ICANN would turn
down well-argued and worked-out proposals without any consideration,
in particular if these proposals were worked out in a transparent
way.

On the other hand, some candidates putting together a pressure group
which claims to have found the holy grail of wisdom, and starts
excluding the @large public at the earliest moment possible, may in
effect turn out not to be credible at all.

> However, I agree that the most open the drafting phase is, the
> best would be the resulting proposal. So maybe we should have an
> open discussion list for the proposal itself, and then have the
> advisory council support it.

This is more like what I was originally talking about.  However, the
advisory council should consider itself to be a provisorial ad-hoc
committee, without any superior legitimation, and without long-term
legitimation.

>>If we really want to create written concepts intended for
>>publication, I suggest we should mimic the essentials of the
>>IETF WG process, with drafts, and some final,
>>consensus-supported document.

> The problem to me is that, in such a big and overlooked matter,
> you have to prove your consensus, and prove that it is
> significant - which means, not just the consensus of you and a
> couple of friends, but the consensus of the community. Keep in
> mind that you cannot communicate with the community - you don't
> even know who they are. The only way we have to be in touch with
> them, by now, is through this election process.

One means of proving consensus is inviting all parties interested in
a topic - which will include the candidates! -, and giving them the
opportunity to comment.  The comments will have to be taken into
account.

Finally, make the discussion process open to the public, and archive
it in a publically available way.

If you proceed like this, you'll always be able to say: "You had an
opportunity to comment.  You didn't, so please don't whine about
lack of consensus." This is, basically, what Andrew McLaughlin did
about parts of the nomination process, when turning down part of the
criticism from list members.

-- 
Thomas Roessler                         <roessler@does-not-exist.org>