Reaching Decisions and "Re: [wg-c] Well, maybe this won't work"

["Robert F. Connelly" <rconnell@psi-japan.com>]

At 17:22 06-09-1999 -0400, Jonathan Weinberg wrote:

>         I had hoped that enough people in the center could rally round a 
> centrist,
>compromise  position, that it wouldn't matter that there were holdouts on
>either side. In the face of this opposition, though, eight people humming
>in favor just won't do it.  Unless we get a strong surge of support for the
>proposal now, I'll conclude that it's not going anywhere.  I'm fresh out of
>ideas for forging consensus — anybody else have any?

Dear Jonathan:

For some reason, no one responded to my posting under the subject "Reaching 
Decisions".

I quoted a bit of important history.  What that history taught us was that 
three people could drown out the voices of 22.

Here is that prior posting with a change in the actual ballot:

Dear WG-C:

I am greatly concerned that this WG is bogged down, has gone astray or, 
better, been led astray.

I'd like to give you a bit of CORE history.  Early on, there was a lot of 
traffic and acrimony over the issue of whether our contributions to CORE 
should be thought of "dues" to CORE or should be advances against that 
happy day when they would applied to purchasing registrations units 
(RCUs).  If you listened to the posting, you would have thought that 75% of 
the members were in favor of charging *all* contributions off as dues.

I was among those who could see that it would favor a small number of very 
large CORE members against the smaller, geographically diverse members.  I 
pressed for a vote, finally got agreement to the content of the ballot.

There were to be three options:

1. No credit against registrations (all attributed to dues).
2. 50% registrations, 50% dues.
3. 100% to be allocated to advances against future registrations.

When it was all over, only 3 members voted for option 1, only 12% were 
making all the noise.

The following is a summary of the Votebot on this issue:

Started: 01/06/1998 Ended: 01/10/1998

      Point I
           a) No credit against registrations. 3
           b) 50% credit against registrations. 7
           c) All contributions are to be advances against registrations 15

I now therefore make the following proposal for a Votebot on the issues 
proposed by Jonathan in his "Straw ballot".  I don't think I've heard any 
strong support for Option 3, but it could be included in the Votebot.

[] Option Zero, no new gTLDs {added to this present posting}
[] Option 1
[] Option 2
[] Option 3
[] Option 1, monitor results, increase gTLDs if results of initial
      gTLD delegations do not cause adverse effects.
[] Abstain

I further propose that if we don't bring this issue to a vote, we discharge 
WG-C with a round of thanks to our Co-Chairs for giving us the best that 
they could considering the divergent views, hidden agendas and axes being 
ground.

I close with a bit of wisdom from a former boss, Ulric B. Bray.  We have 
too many "expert opinions", we need a test.

In all sincerity,
Bob Connelly





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"One test is worth three expert opinions!"
Ulric B. Bray