Re: [wg-d] WG Principles

[Karl Auerbach <karl@CaveBear.com>]

I see that you are working very hard to try to create an anti-democratic
DNSO in which a few insiders can cover themselves with the assumed mantle
of approval of those who are absent.

Simply stated -- you want silence to be presumed to be assent, I want
silence to be presumed to be neither assent nor dissent.

I want clear cut decision points with clear cut votes, you want vague
"consensus" with no objective measure of whether the measure of
"consensus" reflects actual points of view.

Why people wave "consenus" as some sort of high and mighty thing of
angelic goodness is beyond me.

I consider "consensus" to be synonymous with "not accountable" and
suggestive of back room dealings and hidden agendas.

Let's dispense with new-age warm and fuzzy thinking about "consensus" and
simply run the DNSO the way that normal community groups, businesses, and
governments work -- with well stated rules of order and clear cut voting
on clear cut issues.

It's not a heavy burden.  You might try to color it as a "global
plebiscite", but I'd call it standard rules of order that are practiced
daily by huge numbers of groups around the world.

In working groups, when a decision point is reached, a call for votes is
made.

At the higher, GA leve, when a decision point is reached, a call for votes
is made.

Since we are mainly electronic and can't tally a showing of hands, there
will have to be a voting period.  This means that the votes will have to
be relatively occassional and nothing firmly fixed in the interim.

So it would not be a burden.

As for your assertions:

> > These working groups ought to be able to come up with proposals that they
> > submit to the DNSO GA. (Indeed, any individual should also be able to
> > submit a proposal, working groups need not have the sole perogative to
> > make proposals.)
> 
> You can do that now -- submit a proposal to the GA list.

The current ICANN bylaws do not say that it is permissible.  Indeed, the
ICANN bylaws only require the NC to recognize submissions from bodies that
the the NC itself "determines are appropriate to carry out the substantive
work of the DNSO".

We need to have an express statement that there is no difference
between working groups chartered from "above" and those that "self-form".

Indeed, there is bylaw language that "Constituencies or GA participants
may propose that the NC consider domain name policies or recommendations."
This implies that others may not (based on the basic canon of
interpretation that an enumeration of items implies the exclusion of those
items not enumerated.)

> > The DNSO GA should have the ability to take a proposal and rewrite it
> > fully and adopt its own rewrite without ever sending it back to any
> > working group if it feels that that is the right thing to do.
> 
> It already has that ability.

Nope, the current ICANN bylaws may arguably give the NC that power -- the
bylaws do not indicate that the NC may modify the submissions as opposed
to simply returning them.  And the bylaws don't say anything about the GA
in these respects.

> Of course, there is the little matter 
> of how you actually *organize* the GA to write proposals -- the 
> conventional answer is that a WG is formed...but apparently you want 
> to create yet another organizational structure embedded in the GA...

The GA should be able to do whatever if feels like at the moment.  If it
feels that it should spawn a drafting committee, it can.  If it feels like
doing an electronic markup it can.

 
As for the IETF process...

> I certainly don't have the experience in the IETF that Randy does, 
> but from my experience, your characterization is so badly skewed as 
> to be devoid of useful guidance.

Yes, you are certainly right in that one -- you don't have experience
in the IETF.

On the other hand, I've been involved with the net since 1974 and with the
IETF since the mid 1980's.  And I helped develop a not-inconsequential set
of the IETF's procedures.  I also participate in a fair number of working
groups.  I have no reason to mischaracterize the IETF, I have nothing
to gain by so doing.  Indeed, to the contrary, in technical matters, I
have much to gain by the smooth running IETF.  But I'm not blind to its
limitations.

I do not believe that I have mischaracterized the IETF and I stand by my
opinion that that its procedures are inappropriate for use for the
development of soft policy.


 
> In particular, IETF WGs are *completely open* to anyone who wants to
> participate (**).

I never said they weren't.


>....  I am certainly not claiming
> that the IETF model is perfect for our purposes, or that there
> shouldn't be modifications.  But the fact is that we are talking
> about "rough consensus" based decision processes using email and
> other online means for tools -- we are not talking about parliament.  
> The IETF has been doing this for a long time, and they have lots of 
> real, rubber-meets-the-road experience with how to do this kind of 
> stuff. 

Wow, you weren't kidding when you said that you don't understand the IETF
process. "...lots of real, rubber-meets-the-road experience with how to do
this kind of stuff."  Rubbish.

The IETF has not been doing soft policy "for a long time".  There is no
experience base, and certainly few, if any, sucessful deployments even the
few attempts.

There is no reason whatsoever to use the IETF process as a model.

We should start with the far more sucessful model of clear process with
clear cut decision points with clear cut decisions made by actual, counted
votes, just as is done sucessfully by hundreds of thousands, if not
millions, of groups every day.

		--karl--