Re: [ga] Observations...

["Roberto Gaetano" <ga_list@hotmail.com>]

Danny,

You wrote:

>
>As I review the names of those who actually voted on the GA ballot 
>questions
>http://www.dnso.org/secretariat/b05fullrecord.html , I note that perhaps
>only 18 out of the 91 voters had posted any comments to the GA list in the
>last month.  Frankly, most of the voters are unknown to me.   Simply put, a
>full 80% of those voting do not actively participate on our GA list.  You
>may want to think about why this happens to be the case, and forward some
>suggestions as to how we may make improvements.


It is a fact of life that participation via a vote is higher than 
participation via a debate. Think about political elections: (almost)every 
citizen votes, but a small percentage participates in public debates. In 
fact, you don't even know (generally) how people vote for their political 
leadership or for a proposition (in countries that have voting systems for 
propositions).

Incidentally, this is even more true when participation in a debate that 
people may suppose to be civilized may expose the person that expresses a 
point of view to libel and slander.


>
>I was also quite dismayed to note that many our members who posted in the
>last month did not choose to vote:
><snip>..., Gaetano, ...<snip>.
>
>You may also want to think about why regular contributors have decided not
>to participate in a vote.


I have firm data about myself ;>), and can make hypothesis for the others.
In my case, I have abundantly made clear my POV on the matter of Individual 
Constituencies: what we need to do is to create a wider support (I wrote 
about involving other organizations/bodies in the project, for instance), 
and to draft a *new* proposal.
The simple motion declaring a matter of principle, without effort to broaden 
the support beyond the few members of the GA, without concrete proposal, is 
useless, if not counterproductive, providing further demonstration that we 
are unable to go beyond the very limited border we have been imposing on 
ourselves. Hence, my refusal to participate in this exercise in futility 
(please note: "refusal to participate", not "abstention" - I am *very much* 
in favour of an Individual Constituency, but this is not the way that will 
bring neither progress in the issue, nor progress for the GA).
Incidentally, is there anybody that *really* thinks that something will be 
achieved by this motion? Moreover, is there anybody that, if he/she were in 
the ICANN BoD, would say: "Gee, this is really strong support to IC, a new 
fact that we have to consider for implementing a new constituency!"?

Second motion, the funding.
I belong to the small minority who thinks that any proposal on financial 
matters should be accompanied by a business case, i.e. that whenever a party 
is asking for money it should explain why. Moreover, whenever disboursement 
of money is proposed for third parties, these third parties should at least 
be informed, if not asked for agreement. We ask money for the other 
Supporting Organizations without even knowing if they agree to receive this 
money. Because people may well disagree, and prefer to be financially 
independent, which will keep their political independence.
Again, is there anybody that expects the Board to say "Gee, you are right, 
tell us how much and we write a check!"?

Anyway, the new game in town is to vote motions, not to get work done. Fine. 
But don't expect breathtaking results.
Now, this is the reason for myself. Some other people may feel the same way, 
but some may have other reasons, as simple as being away from the mail 
during the week, having read the ballot and set aside for later, but 
forgotten, or any other reason.

>
>You may wish to also note that over 70% of the members on our voting
>registry decided not to vote.  Perhaps we need to look at this "registry"
>list, and ask ourselves if we need a mechanism to keep it "current".

Please, don't!
The only reason for deleting somebody from the list is rejection of the 
e-mail with the ballot (and even in that case I would involve the watchdog 
committee).
Also, please explain me what harm does to the GA to have subscribers to the 
voting registry that do not participate in some voting, and what will be the 
advantage of having a smaller voting registry (I assume that the sending of 
the ballot is an automated procedure, and that DNSO Secretariat is *not* on 
a dial-up connection to the PSTN).


>
>If we are going to transform this Assembly into a body that is reasonably
>functional and representative, we may need to re-think our approach.

Good.

How about to foster a proposal for Individual Constituencies that tries to 
involve new individuals outside the GA world, possibly contacting 
organizations that already have individual membership to explore possible 
collaboration (but we need a programme, a strategy, ...).
Do some outreach, for instance (how about talking to the former wg-e, and to 
resume from there? If the IC could bring new people into the process, the 
picture could change dramatically).
In Europe the success of the AtLarge was largely (sorry for the pun) 
determined by the press, mainly in Germany. Are we sure that the press could 
not be involved again for a campaign in favour of the rights of the 
individuals in the Domain Name system?
Just ideas.

For the financials, how about to prepare a budget for the GA? How much is 
needed? For what? How can we canvas? We may discover that the support from 
ICANN and/or the DNSO/NC is not needed, we may achieve financial 
independence (hint: we must discuss issues that have chances to be relevant, 
not the over-repeated supposed censorship).
Example: somebody had the grat idea before Marina del Rey to include 
commercial in the webcast of the GA. It will work, but only if the GA will 
debate matters that are likely to gather people to their screens, and 
connect.


>  I am
>open to further suggestions, observations, and comments on how we can work
>to improve our Assembly.

Not easy.
I tried during my term, but with little success.
I really hope you can achieve better results.

Regards
Roberto


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