Re: [ga] Re: [announce] Jonathan Cohen elected for 3 years term at the ICANN Board

[Kent Crispin <kent@songbird.com>]

On Fri, Sep 22, 2000 at 06:14:59PM +0200, Roberto Gaetano wrote:
[...]
> > In that notion, the "general assembly of the DNSO" was
> >expected to be like the IETF, an informal general collection of people
> >who participated in the more structured parts of the DNSO.  It was
> >explicitly not supposed to be thought of as having any representative or
> >governing role at all.  And what we got was what the ccTLDs wanted.
> 
> OK.
> If people buy in the fact that the GA shall not have any representative 
> or governing role, then the nomination/endorsement of the DNSO-elected 
> ICANN Director does not make sense. Let's remove it. Let's say 
> "everything is done at the NC level" and we may find that we don't need 
> a GA at all.

It really strikes me that you, like so many others, appear to think that
"representative or governing roles" are the only things that matter. 
For people trained as lawyers or political scientists or even
economists, such a blunder is perhaps excusable.  But you are a
technical person, so I am finding it hard to understand why you are 
missing this...

People go to IETF meetings primarily to participate in individual
working groups; the plenary meetings (which might be the closest thing
to a "GA of the IETF") don't have a significant representative or
governing role in the matters of the IETF; most of the real work of the
IETF takes place in the working groups, the IAB, the IESG, the
nominating committee, and so on.  Occasionally rough polls are taken in
the plenary meetings to guage the feelings of the IETF participants as a
whole -- these are more opinion surveys than elections; Jon Postel gave
a presentation of what the "new IANA" would look like at an IETF
plenary; the IAHC gave a presentation at an IETF plenary etc etc.  This 
was the role that Dennis Jennings had in mind for the GA.  Most of the 
work of the DNSO was to be done in the working groups; the WG 
participants would be part of the GA by definition.

> What I object is the fact of having a GA that is only window dressing.

All I can say is that your statement simply represents a fundamental
misunderstanding about the intended role of the GA.  This
misunderstanding is quite common, unfortunately. 

> Either it has a function, and let's put it in condition to function, or 
> it does not have a function, and then let's abolish it.

In my opinion, the real problem is not the GA, but that the role of
working groups has been seriously misimplemented.  We should have dozens
of WGs; they should be formed easily; they should be allowed to fail. 

I should point out, incidentally, that WGs in the DNSO don't have any
representative or governing role, either -- the job of WGs is,
fundamentally, to *produce documents*.  Those documents could be policy 
documents, technical or legal studies, or whatever.  If a policy 
document produced by a WG has wide support and is very persuasive, the 
NC and the Board will take it very seriously, otherwise they won't take 
it seriously.

[...]
> >Moreover, while Jonathan Cohen did receive several endorsements from NC
> >members, he was well over the threshold if you throw all those 
> >endorsements out.
> 
> So what?
> You reason as if I was unhappy about the election of Jon Cohen.
> I am unhappy about the process, and specifically the role of the GA in 
> the process.
> If the output of the "endorsement phase" is (n) candidates to NC, and 
> Jon, Peter, Jamie, or whoever else is one of the (n), what happens next 
> is not GA business.

That's PRECISELY and EXPLICITLY what the output of the endorsement phase
is supposed to be.  It is supposed to be a slate of nominees from which 
the NC will elect a director.

> But the output of the process will be a Director that can claim:
> - support of the majority of the NC
> - a certain level of "popularity".
> Again, if the second is not needed, lets take it away!

The second is your fantasy.  It was not part of the rational for the
nomination process at all.  The purpose of the threshold of 10 is not a
popularity measure, but instead it is intended to weed out nonsense
candidates who have no support whatsoever.  It is purposely set fairly 
low to allow minory candidates an opportunity to stand for election.

It was indeed you who proposed that the NC should treat it as a
popularity measure of some significance, but in my opinion that was 
simply a bad idea from the start.  The obvious influx of numerous 
outsiders reveals quite clearly that it was a bad idea.
 
> But the threshold of 10 endorsements, when in any case the candidate 
> needs more or less the same number of NC votes to be elected, is a farce
> , I keep the point.

You keep your opinion that it is a farce, you mean.  But the only
purpose of the process is to get a slate of reasonable candidates, and
by your stated standards it succeeded quite well at that.

[...]

> Again (for the last time): shall the GA have a role or not?
> If yes, let's do it in a meaningful way.
> If not, let's abolish it.

The criteria for a "meaningful role" being what?  That the GA should be 
able to produce a slate of candidates that the NC doesn't like?

-- 
Kent Crispin                               "Do good, and you'll be
kent@songbird.com                           lonesome." -- Mark Twain
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