This is the English Version. Spanish Version will be sent to the Spanish language list. Dear All, I have received complaints from members of the region about several recent postings on the LACRALO lists. Those postings relate to ongoing disagreements between several individuals relating their point of view regarding the running of LACRALO. I am concerned about those postings because they do not appear to be of help towards improving Internet user input in LACRALO and in ALAC. Quite the contrary, they re-iterate established positions from several individuals and end up turning other volunteers off from being involved. The time spent discussing these issues on the list ends up taking precedence over the time that members from the region could devote to more productive tasks such as commenting on Current Comment periods and other activities which were advertised on the ALAC-Announce list. Some of the postings contravene parts of Rule 22 of our ALAC Rules of Procedure. They are inappropriate according to: 22.9 Unprofessional commentary, regardless of the general subject, 22.10 Postings libelous being used to abuse, harass, stalk, or threaten others, 22.11 Postings that are, knowingly false, ad-hominem, or misrepresents another person, I am not going to stand accused of taking sides, nor will I contravene the very rules I have quoted here by pointing the finger at anyone. However, I will kindly ask you all, Ladies and Gentlemen, that you please moderate your language. We are working with ICANN staff and LACRALO leadership in order to continue on a dialog to improve relations, by making use of the neutrality and fairness of the ICANN Ombudsman who can act as a mediator. This mediation takes place out of this forum and has no place on public mailing lists. An excellent amount of work has taken place in Costa Rica and the region should be looking at building on this. Like every region, this takes a lot of time and effort. We, the At-Large community and ICANN as a whole, have some serious challenges coming up in the form of a threat to the multi-stakeholder system. We clearly have to work smarter with each other. Yours sincerely, Olivier MJ Crépin-Leblond ALAC Chair