RE: [ga] Consensus... Definition?

["Gomes, Chuck" <cgomes@verisign.com>]

Danny,

First of all we need to define the audience.  If you are concerned about
trying to find a consensus about the community at large, then measuring it
by registrars only is very inadequate.  There are many other stakeholders
involved besides registrars although I would agree that the registrars are
vital.  Obviously, a very critical group of stakeholders is made up of
registrants.  Other key stakeholder groups include resellers and registries.

In my (maybe too idealistic) opinion, every effort should be made to come up
with a solution that all parties are willing to accept and support.  This
means that all parties need to be willing to constructively participate in
the process.  In the end, if they cannot come up with a solution that all or
at least a very substantial portion of stakeholders will support, then maybe
it should be concluded that there is no consensus.  Of course, we have to
answer the question, what is 'a very substantial portion of the
stakeholders."

There are currently 91 active registrars all of varying sizes.  Do they all
have equal votes regardless of how impacted they will be with regard to the
policy?  Should only those who participate in the process be counted?
Should extra efforts be made to involve non-participants?  Should one key
stakeholder be able to block all efforts to reach consensus?  These
questions and others need to be answered and I don't claim to have the right
answers.

You will find that I tend to react negatively to any claim of consensus
based on a simple vote.  As I have stated elsewhere, I do not see voting as
the primary way of measuring consensus but rather as one tool to use on the
way to achieving consensus.  So, in response to your specific question, I
would not automatically say that an 80 to 2 vote of registrars means
consensus has been reached.  I would need more data: how many registrars
actually voted? how many registrants are represented by the 80 registrars
and the 2 registrars? what efforts were made to reach out to the registrars
who did not vote? what data is available from registrants? etc.

Chuck 

-----Original Message-----
From: DannyYounger@cs.com [mailto:DannyYounger@cs.com]
Sent: Sunday, August 12, 2001 9:56 AM
To: ga@dnso.org
Subject: [ga] Consensus... Definition? 


Chuck Gomes writes:  "Finally, one of the underlying assumptions that seems 
to be prevalent is
that we should always be able to come to a consensus position.  It is not 
only possible but also reasonable that on many issues it will not be
possible 
to reach a community consensus.  That is perfectly okay.  In those cases we 
should simply let market forces work as freely as possible and
allow diversity so that consumers can choose what best meets their needs and

interests."

I think that we need to put this comment into perspective, so I will pose 
this question to Chuck:

If the two largest gTLD registrars (that between them register over 70% of 
all such domains) adopt an auto-NACK policy, and the remaining 80 other 
registrars vote to adopt an auto-ACK policy, would you consider this to be a

legitimate consensus for auto-ACK?  
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