Re: [NA-Discuss] Changes to OP

The way I see the Chair's duty in judging the appropriateness of participant posts (and this goes for most of his other responsibilities), is that although he's the one who makes the last call, he should make every effort to take into account the opinions of the group. If the voice of the group says someone's posts are inappropriate because they do not respect our code of conduct, the Chair must take this into account when making his decision. At some point however we have to rely on our Chair, otherwise we'd always be voting,

Hi all,

Two things:

1. On the discussion below, I tend to agree with Evan. If we had seen more discussion between individuals this last week, I might think differently but it doesn't seem to be an issue yet. If it does then we should re-open.

2. On the Code of Conduct - I read the draft that Luc sent around and would like to voice my support of it but I just have one niggling concern and I'm not sure if I'm just being paranoid or not. What happens if the Chair doesn't find someone's comments to be inappropriate but the group does? Should we have some way of appealing the Chair's decision in such a case? The reason why I bring this up was illustrated last week when most of us were shocked by one person's outburst but Wendy didn't think that his outburst was inappropriate. Now, I'm not picking on Wendy here - she has every right to her opinion on this subject. But what if she was our Chair? Then her opinion would not be reflective of the group's.

Darlene

From: na-discuss-bounces@atlarge-lists.icann.org on behalf of Evan Leibovitch
Sent: Wed 4/25/2007 4:00 PM
To: Wendy Seltzer; NA Discuss
Subject: Re: [NA-Discuss] Changes to OP

Wendy Seltzer wrote:
> I don't want to devalue the ALSs,
Yet you proposed a system that does just that.

> but I do want to empower the individuals within and outside them.
>

The creation of a catch-all pseudo-ALS, offers fair involvement;
anything beyond that empowers some to the penalty of others.

As I've said before, the goal here is should not be to give multiple
points of entry to the existing insiders who know how to exploit the
fine print, but to provide encouragement to those who aren't even yet
part of the process. The emphasis should be to encourage participation
through ALSs -- existing or potential -- with bypassing them through
direct participation being seen as a last resort rather than a preferred
method of access. We need a process that is not only fair but that
_appears_ fair, and that means not elevating the influence of the
would-be elite at the outset.

In my own opinion, anyone who is more interested in policy than ego
should have no problem participating through an ALS (or -- failing that
-- joining a NPO that shares their views and spearheading a move for
that NPO to become an ALS). I have little sympathy for those who are too
self-important to give the ALS process a chance; their greed and
impatience should not be rewarded.

- Evan