Alan, If the decision-making methodology specifies that the SO/ACs need to each make their decisions through a consensus process, the GNSO Council voting process would not seem to qualify. As to whether the current system is "deemed quite satisfactory," opinions can certainly differ. Greg On Mon, Nov 2, 2015 at 4:32 PM, Alan Greenberg <alan.greenberg@mcgill.ca> wrote:
Greg, I have to disagree with you on several counts.
The GNSO voting mechanisms were indeed designed to make decisions based on a majority or supermajority. The current two-house voting thresholds were designed to emulate the simpler vote-counting in the last incarnation of the GNSO (I was one of the people who agonized over how to emulate those earlier simpler rules). Perhaps the current rule for "majority" is no satisfactory and needs to be changed, but if so, that is a decision that the GNSO can make.
The GNSO uses a "majority" to decide to accept or reject new rules, and it has been used for a host of other types of decisions over the years.
The methodology is deemed quite satisfactory to make decision related to the management of policy. But it is also what will be used in deciding if the GNSO will creation or support a petition for the new powers. And it will be the methodology used to decide to remove a GNSO director.
The GNSO is not unique in having multiple positions amongst its members.
I could go on...
Alan
At 01/11/2015 07:51 PM, Greg Shatan wrote:
I have continuing concerns at the overall level (this does not describe a consensus process) and specifically as regards the view of the GNSO (the GNSO does not have a process for consensus decision making; the process fails to recognize that the GNSO is an organization for gTLD policy-making (and the GNSO Council is a policy management body), and that for any other purpose the groups participating in the GNSO represent discrete stakeholder communities). Nothing I've read or heard has resolved these concerns.
However, whether we view this as a consensus process or a proto-voting process, I'm still grappling with the "weighting" issue (which in turn leads to the "fractional" or "splitting" issue).
In order to visualize the relative weights under 3 different scenarios, I prepared 3 pie charts, which I've put in the attached document. (Note that this reflects my concern that the stakeholder communities participating in the GNSO should be viewed separately for purposes other then gTLD policy-making. Note also that I've assumed that any "ccNSO" participation would need to take into account non-ccNSO ccTLDs, so I've reflected that in the pie chart labeling.) Apologies for some "rounding errors" (literally); but these do not affect the substance. Use these charts as you see fit.... I'm happy to revise, or prepare other charts, if need be.
Greg