[ga] Internet Communications by the General Assembly

["William S. Lovell" <wsl@cerebalaw.com>]

While there are any number of web sites that do their best
to keep the feet of ICANN to the fire, ranging from that of
ICANN's pre-eminent Director
        Karl Auerbach <karl@CaveBear.com>
to those maintained by General Assembly members such
as Joanna Lane and Chris McElroy and others, and there
are also, of course, the numerous web pages of ICANN
itself, I am not aware of any web site maintained by the
DNSO General Assembly as such.  If it is "consensus"
that everyone is searching for, out of all the hoopla on
the various ga lists, to create and maintain such a web
site would be one way to demonstrate what the GA
really stands for as a group.  What content would be
placed on such a web site would of course be a grand
subject to be hashed over on those GA lists, and would
give everyone the opportunity to vent every frustration
ever suffered.

The existence of such a web site, which would have
implicit in its very existence the obligation to put
something on it, would tend to motivate GA members
into (finally!) agreeing on something! I would be willing
to serve as webmaster of such a site, provide and pay
for the hosting thereof, and do the HTML encoding
that would express whatever the GA as a whole asked
to be put up, while at the same time keeping out of it
my own thoughts on various issues, instead putting those
on the GA lists themselves, where, as you all know, I
have never felt the slightest inhibition about stating them.

The General Assembly is to "self-organize," and it
seems to me that at least an expression of GA
philosophy, what it deems itself to be and what
function it thinks it is supposed to be carrying out,
is critical to establishing as actual fact the idea that
it is "self-organizing" anything. The GA suffers from
a lack of credibility, and of the idea that it really
serves any purpose.  Out of millions of Internet
denizens, it has been able to garner only about
300 registered voters, which to me is a pathetic
number. The Chair, Alternate Chair and others
have recently been discussing the matter of
"outreach," and it seems to me that to have its
own website with which netizens around the
world could interact could serve the General
Assembly well in that regard.

If enough people respond to this, and give me
a good domain name under which to register
the site, I will do so, and will then be looking
for some good content to post on it. That
content, as noted, would have to be of a kind
that one can confidently say had behind it the
backing of a substantial block of GA members,
and without any highly controversial matters
that could not honestly be said to have had
any consensus acceptance.

Once such a site were established, with a decent
amount of "consensus" material on it, a next stage
might well be the posting, under a "FORUM" or
some such similar heading, of some current ISSUE
that was under DEBATE, and on which any and all
would be invited to send me opinions, which I would
then post -- censored only by the dictates of good
taste, no personal attacks, and the usual prohibitions
typically imposed in ISP user agreements and the like.
If I had refused to post something, the person wanting
the thing posted could of course complain to the GA,
and any and all could then commence beating on me.
When we got to that stage, I would of course reserve
the right then to post my own thoughts, with the same
rights as any other GA member. (Would I censor myself?
On some days, very likely!!)

I am presently examining the site
http://www.benton.org/Practice/Toolkit/
which may have good ideas on how an organization such
as the General Assembly ought to present itself to the
world, and whatever I find there that seems useful I
would intend to use.  If this thing flies at all, I would
also be very receptive to any suggestions on how to do
it from anyone who wanted to send them to me, and to
any offers of assistance in getting the thing up and running.

Bill Lovell


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