Re: [ICANN-EU] European At Large Council

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

On 2000-08-29 22:07:18 +0200, Alexander Svensson wrote:

> 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): 

Being a list owner (i.e., dealing with bounces, and approving
subscribe requests majordomo considers to be strange ;-) doesn't
make anyone an expert.  ;-)

> An unstructured list will IMHO neither be helpful for the At
> Large members nor for the At Large director.

Even this depends on the behaviour, intention and discipline of the
list's members.  An "unstructured" list may or may not work.  The
only way to know is to try it.  (Additionally, the concept of a
"working" list can depend on members' technical possibilities, and
look quite different from various users' points of view.  For
instance, users of software with sufficiently newsreader-like
capabilities will be able to survive and tolerate more traffic and
noise than users of more simple-minded user agents.)

> 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

The DNSO-GA approach is elegant and simple, but lacking an important
feature:

>> 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 wasn't thinking so much about appropriate vs. inappropriate, but
rather about the way Elias "alpeh1" Levy handles threads which
threaten to generate too much traffic.  In this case, he normally
(1) announces that he will "kill this thread", and (2) frequently
posts a summary of the most common arguments, generated from the
incoming messages.

However, as I wrote in my previous message, this model is of limited
scalability, and heavily depends on the commitment and availability
of the moderator(s).

Obviously, more sophisticated models are readily available - think
about slashdot and similar places where members moderate.  However,
these approaches share the problem that they need a feed-back
channel which is not readily available for e-mail lists.  On the
other hand, I don't believe that a web forum would be the right
thing to use here - there's a reason why more serious discussions
tend to favor mailing lists as a medium.  For instance, mailing
lists can actually accomodate _less_ traffic, while a web forum
requires filler noise to keep users' attention. (But that's a
different thread.)

BTW, there's another tool which may be interesting: Message delays.
Just by slowing down message delivery, it's frequently possible to
considerably reduce the rate at which discussions explode.

>> I still have problems with considering the @large
>> member-nomination candidates to be automatically "the members'
>> wish".  Consider, for instance, the fact that the only eastern
>> European (except the former Eastern part of Germany, where Lutz
>> comes from) person in the game is a Nomcom candidate.

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

Ups, I should have looked at the ranking list before writing that,
instead of extrapolating from earlier numbers. ;-)

> But I agree with Thomas -- this 'pre-election' is about finding a
> suitable candidate for a Director. I would not like a parliament
> consisting only of people who tried to become Prime Minister...

Nice comparison, and pretty much to the point.

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