Re: [ICANN-EU] European At Large Council

["Jeanette Hofmann" <jeanette@medea.wz-berlin.de>]

> 
> Dear Vittorio, Thomas,
> thanks for the constructive sum up and the interesting
> thoughts -- I think we should pursue this!
> 
> I respond here only to a small part of Vittorio's list.
> 
 
> I agree with Thomas that such an At Large Council would 
> have to stick to the standards it is expecting from ICANN,
> i.e. transparent, bottom-up, regionally diverse.

Good point.
All lists should be open for everybody. A faq, an archive and a set of 
rules may help to avoid too much noise.
With regard to specific tasks, milestones may also be of help. 

> We should however take into account the experiences
> from other lists (e.g. Thomas' as a list-owner, Roberto 
> and Marc from the ICANN lists): An unstructured list 
> will IMHO neither be helpful for the At Large members 
> nor for the At Large director. 
> 
> > Thinking about an open mailing list, the following approach may help -
> > it has certain implementation problems, though:
> >
> > - Create two lists with a common submission address: One is open for
> >   all, one is moderated.

I'd guess that at least two lists are necessary. One for general 
ramblings or debates about ICANN and related topics, another that is 
strictly target orientied and gets work done. 

> > - Appoint some respected, trusted, and independent individuals as
> >   moderators.
> 
> This is a bit similar to the DNSO-GA with Harald 
> Alvestrand as respected and trusted list monitor
> for "GA with rules". 
> Cf. http://www.dnso.org/clubpublic/ga/Arc03/msg01146.html
> 
> >   Moderation could be done similar to what happens on bugtraq-l (see
> >   http://www.securityfocus.com/) all day: Certain threads are killed
> >   after becoming pointless, and sometimes, postings containing common
> >   arguments are summarized by the moderators.
> 
> I'm not sure whether we can use bugtraq-l as a model;
> it is quite easy to distinguish appropriate content
> when it comes to computer security vulnerabilities, but
> very hard to when it comes to techno-political issues
> (I already hear the chants of 'censorship!'). But we
> can e.g. try out posts-per-day limits.

I agree, our topics are too fuzzy for this model. If we manage to agree 
on rules that are explicitely designed to avoid chaos, flames and 
rampant traffic, we may be able to govern ourselves. This is no 
objection against moderators but rather against delegating authority 
that could well held by all active ML members. I think of the 
moderators' role rather as the last resort. 
Thereby we are forced to develop some sort of common sense and 
culture of the do's and don'ts ;-) Take it as our contribution to 
european integreation ;-))


> Well, Dmitri Bourkov has a lot of votes (322 now, nr. 4).

I've sent him a mail a couple of days ago to tell him about  this ML. He 
is on vacation right now but might be willing to join afterwards. 

jeanette