I hope that all the discussions going on now will remain as a record for the time in which the ALAC Review will take place. It will be interesting to know, for the reviewers, how much time is spent on substantial discussions, and how much time on procedural matters. In particular, how much time is spent in revisiting former consensus decisions taken only few months earlier.
From the attitude point of view, what is appalling, looking from the outside, is how a couple of people have inherited the Jeff William syndrome, i.e. the belief that when they speak, that means that this is the consensus position, and just because the majority does not have neither time nor envy to reply to each and every message, that becomes the consensus, overriding previous decisions. Last but not least, I do not take sides on what form of vote will be more democratic, I just only note that there is one fundamentally undemocratic approach, which is to change the rules of an election on the day before the elections, when nominations are already closed (based on the previous rules). Whether this is on the voting mechanism for ALAC reps, or on the number of seats for the Board. The only good thing is that, as I hoped, all ALSes have signed, making the whole fandango raised on the MoU a complete loss of time. Incidentally, I will write to a trusted third party my forecast on the result, and that can be compared at the end with what really happened. It is a bit funny, because I have the impression that there's a lot of noise for an election that, for the ALAC seats, has the result already known, if you just sit down and think. Cheers, Roberto
With respect to the procedural irregularities which are referenced below, may I strongly advise the region that it would be very advisable to formally adopt rules of procedure to govern conduct of discussion as one of the first, if not the first, order of business after the elections process is concluded. It is apparent that there are a number of community members who are not familiar with good practice standards of decision-making. The community will need to come to a shared understanding of the basics of how to reach agreement in order to be seen as operating in a transparent and legitimate, rules-based way, and for the decisions that are reached to be seen to be legitimate outcomes of a process that is itself legitimate. In that connection I refer the community to the draft Rules of Procedure prepared for the entire At-Large community, available from https://st.icann.org/euralo/index.cgi?rules_of_procedure - in French, English and Spanish. On 11 May 2007, at 16:12, Roberto Gaetano wrote:
I hope that all the discussions going on now will remain as a record for the time in which the ALAC Review will take place. It will be interesting to know, for the reviewers, how much time is spent on substantial discussions, and how much time on procedural matters. In particular, how much time is spent in revisiting former consensus decisions taken only few months earlier. From the attitude point of view, what is appalling, looking from the outside, is how a couple of people have inherited the Jeff William syndrome, i.e. the belief that when they speak, that means that this is the consensus position, and just because the majority does not have neither time nor envy to reply to each and every message, that becomes the consensus, overriding previous decisions. Last but not least, I do not take sides on what form of vote will be more democratic, I just only note that there is one fundamentally undemocratic approach, which is to change the rules of an election on the day before the elections, when nominations are already closed (based on the previous rules). Whether this is on the voting mechanism for ALAC reps, or on the number of seats for the Board. The only good thing is that, as I hoped, all ALSes have signed, making the whole fandango raised on the MoU a complete loss of time. Incidentally, I will write to a trusted third party my forecast on the result, and that can be compared at the end with what really happened. It is a bit funny, because I have the impression that there's a lot of noise for an election that, for the ALAC seats, has the result already known, if you just sit down and think. Cheers, Roberto
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...and I will keep all your emails in case we will see one day a review of the ICANN board. What I find more and more difficult to bear is this patronizing and dismissive attitude towards people who don't share the board's mainstream opinion. jeanette Roberto Gaetano wrote:
I hope that all the discussions going on now will remain as a record for the time in which the ALAC Review will take place. It will be interesting to know, for the reviewers, how much time is spent on substantial discussions, and how much time on procedural matters. In particular, how much time is spent in revisiting former consensus decisions taken only few months earlier. From the attitude point of view, what is appalling, looking from the outside, is how a couple of people have inherited the Jeff William syndrome, i.e. the belief that when they speak, that means that this is the consensus position, and just because the majority does not have neither time nor envy to reply to each and every message, that becomes the consensus, overriding previous decisions. Last but not least, I do not take sides on what form of vote will be more democratic, I just only note that there is one fundamentally undemocratic approach, which is to change the rules of an election on the day before the elections, when nominations are already closed (based on the previous rules). Whether this is on the voting mechanism for ALAC reps, or on the number of seats for the Board. The only good thing is that, as I hoped, all ALSes have signed, making the whole fandango raised on the MoU a complete loss of time. Incidentally, I will write to a trusted third party my forecast on the result, and that can be compared at the end with what really happened. It is a bit funny, because I have the impression that there's a lot of noise for an election that, for the ALAC seats, has the result already known, if you just sit down and think. Cheers, Roberto
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Agree with Roberto. And with an earlier message by Rudi on the substance. What happens with this discussion and lack of decision, is that, it seems the euralo will be the only organization not represented in San Juan. And that will make a case that the other ralos are working, except the North/West one, where there's a particular design to stop solutions, and introduce new problems. I wonder why is that. veni At 08:12 5/11/2007 -0700, you wrote:
I hope that all the discussions going on now will remain as a record for the time in which the ALAC Review will take place. It will be interesting to know, for the reviewers, how much time is spent on substantial discussions, and how much time on procedural matters. In particular, how much time is spent in revisiting former consensus decisions taken only few months earlier. From the attitude point of view, what is appalling, looking from the outside, is how a couple of people have inherited the Jeff William syndrome, i.e. the belief that when they speak, that means that this is the consensus position, and just because the majority does not have neither time nor envy to reply to each and every message, that becomes the consensus, overriding previous decisions. Last but not least, I do not take sides on what form of vote will be more democratic, I just only note that there is one fundamentally undemocratic approach, which is to change the rules of an election on the day before the elections, when nominations are already closed (based on the previous rules). Whether this is on the voting mechanism for ALAC reps, or on the number of seats for the Board. The only good thing is that, as I hoped, all ALSes have signed, making the whole fandango raised on the MoU a complete loss of time. Incidentally, I will write to a trusted third party my forecast on the result, and that can be compared at the end with what really happened. It is a bit funny, because I have the impression that there's a lot of noise for an election that, for the ALAC seats, has the result already known, if you just sit down and think. Cheers, Roberto
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On 2007-05-11 08:12:29 -0700, Roberto Gaetano wrote:
From the attitude point of view, what is appalling, looking from the outside, is how a couple of people have inherited the Jeff William syndrome,
*snip* If there's anything that this discussion shows, then it's a total lack of willingness to build a compromise solution in the face of differences of opinion, and some worrying lack of neutrality on the staff side. The fact that you have nothing better to do than pull the Jeff Williams card speaks more (and quite disappointingly so!) to your ability to be objective, show leadership, and respect different opinions, than it speaks to the RALO's functioning overall. (Though I'll admit that one conclusion that one might draw from this entire debacle is that the RALO structure as such is neither functional, nor robust. One of the underlying reasons for the hesitation to sign the MoU on FITUG's behalf is that I was struggling whether I should recommend returning the ALS accreditation right away.) Regards, -- Thomas Roessler <roessler@does-not-exist.org>
Thomas, perhaps we should speak here only for the euRALO, not the RALOs as such? I think that if people want to contribute, they do it. If they don't want, they search for reasons. I am not talking about you here, by the way, in case you have doubts. veni At 16:48 5/13/2007 -0600, Thomas Roessler wrote:
(Though I'll admit that one conclusion that one might draw from this entire debacle is that the RALO structure as such is neither functional, nor robust.
Thomas Roessler wrote:
If there's anything that this discussion shows, then it's a total lack of willingness to build a compromise solution in the face of differences of opinion,
Absolutely agree, was also one of my points in the original message. and some worrying lack of
neutrality on the staff side.
On this we disagree. Staff only intervened pointing out the decisions already taken in previous meetings, and acted thinking that a decision should be treated as a decision, and acted upon. However, maybe I missed something. If you have specific examples, please let me know, and I will be happy to stand corrected.
The fact that you have nothing better to do than pull the Jeff Williams card speaks more (and quite disappointingly so!) to your ability to be objective, show leadership, and respect different opinions, than it speaks to the RALO's functioning overall.
Wow! I might have hit a nerve. But again, it would help me to know specific cases in which I showed lack of objectivity or disrespect of opinions (as for leadership, I have pointed out multiple times that I am here as an European individual user, nothing more, nothing less, therefore I have no claim to any leadership role, quite the contrary, I am extremely happy to be able to express opinions freely). Probably we have a different view on what is an opinion, and what is an attempt to derail an established process. For instance, when Annette, former ALAC Chair, sends the message (attached for your reference), given also the tone of the message and the changed title my assessment is that she is not expressing an opinion, that I would respect, but attempts to force an action that differs from the already taken decisions. And I have very little respect for this.
(Though I'll admit that one conclusion that one might draw from this entire debacle is that the RALO structure as such is neither functional, nor robust. One of the underlying reasons for the hesitation to sign the MoU on FITUG's behalf is that I was struggling whether I should recommend returning the ALS accreditation right away.)
And how would things like extending MoU rights to those who do not assume MoU obligations, or enlarging the Board to whoever wants to join, make it more functional, or robust? Cheers, Roberto
On 2007-05-16 01:07:46 +0200, Roberto Gaetano wrote:
The fact that you have nothing better to do than pull the Jeff Williams card speaks more (and quite disappointingly so!) to your ability to be objective, show leadership, and respect different opinions, than it speaks to the RALO's functioning overall.
Wow! I might have hit a nerve.
Does "Goodwin's law" ring any bells with you? The style of argument that you were using was roughly on the same level (as far as the ICANN context is concerned), and that's simply not what I would have expected from you.
But again, it would help me to know specific cases in which I showed lack of objectivity or disrespect of opinions
See "Jeff Williams" above for just one example.
(as for leadership, I have pointed out multiple times that I am here as an European individual user, nothing more, nothing less, therefore I have no claim to any leadership role, quite the contrary, I am extremely happy to be able to express opinions freely).
You know very well that your word has more weight than that of just some user -- you are a board member, after all, and (socially) you do have a leadership role in this community. With that kind of role comes responsibility. To give one example, though: There have been a number of proposals early on to say "hey, this shouldn't be an ISOC-only show, let's go for a combined ticket." The only answer that that was met with was "nope, and btw, we've no reason in the written ruls to compromise" -- that's not constructive dialogue, and just joining the "two ISOC folks on the ticket" crowd is *far* away from leadership. In the future, I'd like to see you work toward a compromise that all ALSes (or at least significantly more than half of them) can agree to.
(Though I'll admit that one conclusion that one might draw from this entire debacle is that the RALO structure as such is neither functional, nor robust. One of the underlying reasons for the hesitation to sign the MoU on FITUG's behalf is that I was struggling whether I should recommend returning the ALS accreditation right away.)
And how would things like extending MoU rights to those who do not assume MoU obligations, or enlarging the Board to whoever wants to join, make it more functional, or robust?
You're attacking a strawman. I never claimed that any of these steps would lead to more robustness. What I do claim, though, is that any of these steps might have made it easier to establish a collaborative tone here -- as opposed to the style of discussion that we've seen. To your "established decisions" point: When roughly half the members of a set that is supposed to have some kind of consensus expressed a large amount of unhappiness with decisions that had purportedly been made, it might have been a good idea to revisit these decisions, and find a compromise between the different directions of thought. The fact that this hasn't happened, to me, is one of the main causes why EURALO currently looks much more like a trainwreck where folks are fighting about the best place in the first car, than like a serious attempt to adovcate users' rights and interests in ICANN *together* -- which is what it should really be. -- Thomas Roessler <roessler@does-not-exist.org>
participants (5)
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Jeanette Hofmann -
Nick Ashton-Hart -
Roberto Gaetano -
Thomas Roessler -
Veni Markovski