Re: [ga-sys] [Fwd: [ga] Rules for new lists -- needed or not?]

[Joanna Lane <jo-uk@rcn.com>]

WG-Review involved a great deal of controversy, but did have the advantage
of an itemised agenda and a timeline, that kept things moving forward in an
orderly fashion. There was a set of voluntary Rules adopted at the outset,
and posted to the groups temporary website at
http://www.internetstakeholders.com. (still there).

In addition, Greg Burton, as WG-Review Chair, initiated a system of
numbering threads, and set deadlines for discussion, straw polls, interim
reports, summarising discussions, with the final reports supplemented by
documentary evidence on numbers of participants and geographical diversity,
altogether creating a substantive result and list atmosphere whereby Motions
could be proposed and moved forward in a meaningful way. By these means he
successfully discouraged off-topic discussions, as well as defamatory and
personal comments. 

WG-Review worked very well until Philip Shepard decided to micromanage the
group, and attempted to redirect its attention away from the agreed agenda
in the name of the NC. It was an untimely interferance that failed.
WG-Review was not going to be stopped midstream by fiat, but when it became
apparent that documented consensus of the group was not going to elicit the
end results desired by the NC, then the NC resorted to closing down the
mailing list as a means to effectively close down the group. This worked.

Therefore, I would say that the only rule that needs to be adopted is one
that stops the NC closing down a GA list without the formal written
agreement of members participating on that list, which would involve a DNSO
ballot of the full asembly. This will prevent skewing input from the GA if
and when the "top" next sees the "bottom" producing results that adversely
affect it's own position.

 
At the heart of the matter is that Rules (or lack of them) are no substitute
for working procedures and what is failing here is the GA's ability to agree
a clearly understood work agenda and to schedule discussions in an orderly
manner to produce results in a timely fashion.

It is certainly no surprise to me that Task Force Reports ignore GA
Representative comments, or that the ALSC Report ignore list comments, and
no doubt exactly the same result will be forthcoming in due course with
respect to all other DNSO/ ALSO activities.

The problem is that every well-meaning individual elected to represent the
GA is relying upon their personal knowledge and experience of a topic to
prepare written reports, when in fact, there must be a formal and documented
proceedure to back up whatever position statements they make. Without due
process, there is no way for the independent observer to guage the level of
feeling amongst affected stakeholders, however emminent the representative
may be, hence the GA input is ignored in perpetuity.

Wahtever I may say as a prospective GA representative is irrelevant unless I
can state definitively, "This is the GA's position, based on (for example)
500 replies from the GA to the following questions and documented outreach
to each of the Constituencies, as well as 24 public interest groups
representing 100,000 stakeholders each. Therefore consensus is as
follows...." I must also provide numbers from each of the geographical
regions attached to the report.

Rules are not the end of itself, they are the means to an end, and without a
Mission statement and a set of processes and procedures that the group uses
to achieve clearly defined goals, Rules by themselves are useless.

I have beating this drum for a while now.

Regards,
Joanna




on 10/13/01 11:35 PM, Eric Dierker at eric@hi-tek.com wrote:

> I would suggest that we need no rules on these sublists.
> 
> Eric
> From: "Gomes, Chuck" <cgomes@verisign.com>
> Date: Monday, April 23, 2001 7:32 AM
> To: "'babybows.com'" <webmaster@babybows.com>, ga@dnso.org
> Subject: RE: [ga] Rules for new lists -- needed or not?
> 
> As I recall, there were no rules established for Working Group E, nor were
> there really any problems with decorum.  That could probably be explained by
> the fact that WG E did not involve a controversial topic, but rather one
> that not a lot of people were interested in (Global Awareness and Outreach).
> The experience of WG E is therefore not very useful in this discussion.
> 
> Chuck
> 
> -----Original Message-----
> From: babybows.com [mailto:webmaster@babybows.com]
> Sent: Sunday, April 22, 2001 9:12 PM
> To: ga@dnso.org
> Subject: [ga] Rules for new lists -- needed or not?
> 
> 
> Questions for those of you that participated in working groups A,B,C,D,E,
> and Review...
> 
> Did your working groups have formal rules?  If not, were there many
> instances of decorum problems?   Did you manage to get the work done without
> recourse to an abuse resolution process?  We need to determine what rules,
> if any, should govern these lists.  Perhaps past experience can guide us.
> 
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