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

[Eric Dierker <eric@hi-tek.com>]

Joanna,

As always I am humbled by your recitation of truth.  I think we are in hand
holding distance of agreement in totality of the best practices and your
conceptualism is within the parameters of my expectations.

In other words I will push yours and Bills best practices through for informal
consensus.  I will be brutalized here but what the heck.  Trying to take official
action as a non official has its consequences.  You two did a great Job on this
and so it is the least I can do to supply my support to it.

I know that good may even hurt sometimes.

Sincerely,
Eric

Joanna Lane wrote:

> 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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> >
> >

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