Re: [wg-c] about the consensus call

["Kevin J. Connolly" <CONNOLLK@rspab.com>]

Dear Colleagues (and you not-so-dear colleagues, too :-)

I am concerned about a number of things.  Their convergence has to do 
with the continued degradation of the WG and the entire gTLD process.  
This WG was chartered to develop and report the consensus of the 
involved groups regarding three narrowly-defined but critically important 
sets of issues.  We have now become bogged-down in a number of 
non-substantive issues, and it bears noting that we are making little or 
no real substantive process.

My sensei makes fun of me for meditating (in hope of enlightenment).  
Once, he picked up a piece of slate and licked it.  Fool that I am, I asked 
him what he was doing.  He told me that he was making a mirror!  Twice 
fool that I am, I asked him, how can licking a slate make a mirror?  His 
response (I should have seen it coming, I know :-) was:  how can 
meditation give you enlightenment?

How can the sort of disputation in which we engage ..... in a working 
group whose membership appears to be open to all comers, regardless 
of the lateness of the date at which they come to the table, irrespective 
of the agenda they bring to the table (or which they left at home or which, 
as appears to be all too common, they keep beneath a bushel basket) ..... 
develop and report consensus?  Indeed, there are those who believe that 
the ICANN policy of adding gTLDs to the root only when supported by 
consensus is a snipe hunt.   That is, there is logical equivalence between 
that policy and a statement that "the only gTLDs that will ever be in the 
legacy root are already there."  This WG is seriously broke.  That may reflect
that ICANN is seriously broke.  Certainly I am painfully aware that the 
GA and NCC/NCDNHC are seriously broke.

Neither is the process aided by a WG chair whose avid support for a 
particular outcome is patent.  As others have observed, the bias is writ 
large in the current report, which purports to be the report of the Working 
Group even as it denigrates the dissenters as being in opposition to the 
consensus.  The chair's reference to the report as something which is his 
work also testifies to his loss of perspective.

A zen master was crossing a bridge and was confronted by a gang of toughs.  
They taunted him, asking, "How deep is the river of zen, old man?"  His 
response, was:  "Find out for yourself," whereupon he tossed the toughs 
into the river.

Mr. Weinberg, it's time you went for a nice, refreshing swim.

I move that this WG report to the Names Council that it is seriously broke 
and needs to be reconstituted.

Kevin J. Connolly
The opinions expressed are those of the author, not of Robinson Silverman 
Pearce Aronsohn & Berman LLP
This note is not legal advice.  If it were, it would come with an invoice.
As usual, please disregard the trailer which follows.

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