Re: Subject: RE: [wg-review] 4. [GA] Draft Text Clarification Greg Burton

[Kent Crispin <kent@songbird.com>]

On Fri, Feb 16, 2001 at 11:20:14AM +0900, Adam PEAKE wrote:
> >(f) The Officers of the GA shall be members of the Names Council.
> 
> Are they expected to be voting members?
> GA Chair and co-chair perhaps, but the ombudsman? Is it unusual for
> unusual for ombudsmen to have a vote?
> 
> Couple of general GA related comments, I am not sure if they are
> relevant to the issues in this thread, hope so of course...
> 
> 1.  Add some text that requires the names council to explain any
> decisions it makes with respect to recommendations it receives from
> working groups (so there is no repeat of WG-C, why "6-10 new TLDs" was
> ignored.)

You are reporting a factual error.  The NC wrote a cover letter for the
WG-C report -- it did not "ignore" it.  The cover letter was completely
consistent with the report; the Board got the report; the board followed
the 6-10 recommendation. 

[...]

> 2.  NC selection and election of DNSO Board members.
> The Names Council selects 3 board members from among nominations
> received from the GA.  It is incestuous for NC members to also be able
> to nominate and then support candidates given that they are the only
> ones able to vote in the "election".  The current arrangement
> potentially provides an end-run around the GA process, i.e. should the
> NC not like the GA selections it can collectively select a candidate(s)
> of its own choosing and then elect that candidate.
> 
> I hope the Review will recommend that Names Council members may not
> participate in the GA nomination and endorsement process for selecting
> candidates for DNSO Board elections.

There is no practical, legal, ethical or moral way that you could
prevent it, nor should you even want to.  The NC members are themselves
the elected representatives of their constituencies, and thus
accountable to them; the constituencies are part of the GA; a NC member
could always ask one of their constituency members to nominate someone
-- if they can't get someone from their constituency to nominate
someone, then they won't be in office much longer anyway.

I say "nor should you want to" because you are simply propagating a bad 
meme that the NC and the GA are working at cross-purposes.  The GA is 
effectively the membership of the DNSO; the NC is the executive 
committee of the DNSO.

-- 
Kent Crispin                               "Be good, and you will be
kent@songbird.com                           lonesome." -- Mark Twain
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