Re: [NA-Discuss] Bottom Up Action Procedure
Colleagues, in this I only address the decision making form questions, as I see them. What happens after the regional organization has made a decision is not addressed here. Two issues, if not a third, are present in this exchange. There are two mechanisms for decision making, voting, by participants with standing to vote, and consensus, again, by participants with standing to participate in a consensus call. First, for which questions is which mechanism determined? Second, is access to the mailing list alone sufficient to establish standing for either? The latent third issue is assuming that the answer to the second is in the negative, does advocacy by actors lacking standing, presented as such, or presented as some other form of social interaction, but delivered undifferentiated from those having standing, have a substantial possibility of affecting consensus outcomes? My personal experience, after three decades of decision making by consensus in the IETF, and earlier in AFSC organized organizations, is that the body on occasion determines the outcomes. To give an example, at IETFs 50 and 51 a small group of engineers from CNNIC presented a proposal to the IDN WG to fix a known problem in the Unicode table for Chinese. An "intermediate table". There was not consensus that a problem existed, and therefore that the fix should be adopted. A globally incorrect engineering decision was made by a locally correct cost-benefit analysis -- few if any of the contributors to the IDN WG were native Chinese language literate. A "vote" would have recorded what even "rough consensus" obscures, that of the votes for intermediate tables, all of the voters were professionally engaged in the deliver of Han script characters to Han script users, and that of the votes against intermediate tables, none of the voters were so engaged. Incidently, and simply as an item of historical trivia, I was, along with Erik Huizer and Dave Crocker, an engaged contributor to the POISSON WG, which authored RFC 2418, and which Scott Bradner was kind enough to edit. It was about as long, though not quite as contentuous, as the ICANN VI WG. Turning to the question of standing, whether to participate in a consensus call or a vote, not everyone in who "contributes" to the IETF actually has "standing". Reputation matters. No matter how often Jim Flemming posts on the amazing features of IPv8, no one pays him the slightest attention. The situation exists today in the IDNA mailing list, as a collection of cranks attempt to promote their quite daft "multilingual" agenda as an IETF/ICANN text. As a regional organization, residence in the region matters, it can not be ignored without harm to the least of the region's participating residents. With that I'm calling it a day with a quote from former Ops Area Director Randy Bush, concerning routing infrastructure proposals, sent to NANOG a few days ago: The goal is education and understanding, not a contest. These are all good and interesting approaches. Weapons are not allowed, we all work for the Internet. Eric
Eric and all, I again direct you to our Operating Procedures where this is covered: https://community.icann.org/download/attachments/2264679/NA-2007-1-1rev1+NAR... Paragraph 14 states: Rough consensus, as determined by the Chair, will generally be used within the NARALO to manage its current affairs (e.g. producing recommendations to ICANN). Further, paragraph 13 states: In the event that the Chair determines that rough consensus does not exist for the selection of one or more candidates for ALAC seats, the General Assembly will vote. So, everything right up to the selection of ALAC reps is encouraged to be done by rough consensus. Historically, however, we generally vote (when necessary) to elect the Chair, Secretariat and ALAC reps. All other matters (as per paragraph 14) have been done through rough consensus. I believe that this has worked quite well for the group. As for your second question, the Operating Procedures refer to the "General Assembly" making these decisions and paragraph 5 defines that as one representative from each member ALS and one representative of the unaffiliated individuals. Of course, everybody is encouraged to put in their thoughts but to actually determine consensus I would say that we would have to follow this rule. Frankly, I think that this is creating a mountain out of a mole hill in that we have never failed to reach rough consensus fairly easily, painlessly and quickly! D Darlene A. Thompson Community Access Program Administrator Nunavut Dept. of Education / N-CAP P.O. Box 1000, Station 910 Iqaluit, NU X0A 0H0 Phone: (867) 975-5631 Fax: (867) 975-5610 E-mail: dthompson@gov.nu.ca -----Original Message----- From: na-discuss-bounces@atlarge-lists.icann.org [mailto:na-discuss-bounces@atlarge-lists.icann.org] On Behalf Of ebw@abenaki.wabanaki.net Sent: Wednesday, August 24, 2011 6:12 PM To: evan@telly.org Cc: na-discuss@atlarge-lists.icann.org Subject: Re: [NA-Discuss] Bottom Up Action Procedure Colleagues, in this I only address the decision making form questions, as I see them. What happens after the regional organization has made a decision is not addressed here. Two issues, if not a third, are present in this exchange. There are two mechanisms for decision making, voting, by participants with standing to vote, and consensus, again, by participants with standing to participate in a consensus call. First, for which questions is which mechanism determined? Second, is access to the mailing list alone sufficient to establish standing for either? The latent third issue is assuming that the answer to the second is in the negative, does advocacy by actors lacking standing, presented as such, or presented as some other form of social interaction, but delivered undifferentiated from those having standing, have a substantial possibility of affecting consensus outcomes? My personal experience, after three decades of decision making by consensus in the IETF, and earlier in AFSC organized organizations, is that the body on occasion determines the outcomes. To give an example, at IETFs 50 and 51 a small group of engineers from CNNIC presented a proposal to the IDN WG to fix a known problem in the Unicode table for Chinese. An "intermediate table". There was not consensus that a problem existed, and therefore that the fix should be adopted. A globally incorrect engineering decision was made by a locally correct cost-benefit analysis -- few if any of the contributors to the IDN WG were native Chinese language literate. A "vote" would have recorded what even "rough consensus" obscures, that of the votes for intermediate tables, all of the voters were professionally engaged in the deliver of Han script characters to Han script users, and that of the votes against intermediate tables, none of the voters were so engaged. Incidently, and simply as an item of historical trivia, I was, along with Erik Huizer and Dave Crocker, an engaged contributor to the POISSON WG, which authored RFC 2418, and which Scott Bradner was kind enough to edit. It was about as long, though not quite as contentuous, as the ICANN VI WG. Turning to the question of standing, whether to participate in a consensus call or a vote, not everyone in who "contributes" to the IETF actually has "standing". Reputation matters. No matter how often Jim Flemming posts on the amazing features of IPv8, no one pays him the slightest attention. The situation exists today in the IDNA mailing list, as a collection of cranks attempt to promote their quite daft "multilingual" agenda as an IETF/ICANN text. As a regional organization, residence in the region matters, it can not be ignored without harm to the least of the region's participating residents. With that I'm calling it a day with a quote from former Ops Area Director Randy Bush, concerning routing infrastructure proposals, sent to NANOG a few days ago: The goal is education and understanding, not a contest. These are all good and interesting approaches. Weapons are not allowed, we all work for the Internet. Eric ------ NA-Discuss mailing list NA-Discuss@atlarge-lists.icann.org https://atlarge-lists.icann.org/mailman/listinfo/na-discuss Visit the NARALO online at http://www.naralo.org ------
participants (2)
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ebw＠abenaki.wabanaki.net -
Thompson, Darlene