Re: [wg-d] NC Elections. Was: ga] DNSO General Assembly - Revised Agenda

[Kent Crispin <kent@songbird.com>]

On Fri, Aug 13, 1999 at 10:58:53AM -0400, Antony Van Couvering wrote:
> +
> +The NC is to facilitate finding consensus in the *DNSO*, not the GA.
> +The constituencies are part of the DNSO.  A WG of the GA can propose
> +something, and the NC can charter a drafting committee from the
> +constituencies to rewrite it.
> 
> No, the constituencies are part of the General Assembly.  Even the Names
> Council members are just tarted-up members of the General Assembly.

1) Immaterial. The Constituencies have other mechanisms besides the GA
to make their concerns felt, and to express their position in regard
to whether a consensus exists.  That is why we *have* constituencies. 
That is why the constituencies elect the NC.

That is, while everyone is a member of the GA, the *operations* of
the GA are only part of the consenus discovery process.  The
constituencies are perfectly free to devise their own mechanisms for
determining opinion, outside of any GA process. 

2) The only restriction on committees of the NC is that they must
have a member from each constituency.  That is, it would be perfectly
within the bylaws for the NC to charter a committee, drawn ENTIRELY
from NC members, and no one else.  Such a committee could be given
the output of a WG of the GA, and told to rewrite it, because, in the
opinion of the NC, the WG did not represent the consensus of the
entire DNSO, as measured through the feedback of the constituencies 
to their NC reps.

That is, a committee composed only of NC members can rewrite 
anything.  A committee of the *whole* NC can rewrite anything, or come 
up with something from scratch.  The idea that the NC "can't change 
a single comma" is a pure fantasy.

The intent of the GA was that they have influence through their 
EXPERTISE, not that the GA is an independent power center.  The idea 
of the SOs as a whole was that they should provide *expert* opinion 
from various sources.  Populist representation in the structure 
comes from the membership of ICANN, which elects 9 directors.

> On June 19, I wrote regarding the formation of WG-C, "It would be useful
> (and, I believe, correct) to consider all members of the DNSO as members of
> the General Assembly.  They might or might not also belong to
> constituencies."
> 
> To which Joe Sims (surely someone whose authority on the bylaws must be
> respected, even if you don't agree with him) wrote:
> 
> "this seems right to me"
        *****

"Seems" is the operative word.

That is, "this seems right to me", as a reply to your question, quite 
clearly implies the following subtext:  "You have made a very 
general statement about something that might or might not stand up 
to further examination, but it might be right, so I will be polite 
and say something with an affirmative tone."

That is, don't take to the bank, and don't try to make a case from 
it. 

-- 
Kent Crispin                               "Do good, and you'll be
kent@songbird.com                           lonesome." -- Mark Twain