Re: [ga] Who is a GA member?

[Elisabeth Porteneuve <Elisabeth.Porteneuve@cetp.ipsl.fr>]

Dear Danny,

Thank you for asking this interesting and important questions.

The fundamentals about the DNSO Membership are in ICANN Bylaws,
- the DNSO Membership is open to anybody willing to participate.
Accordingly, nobody can restrain the DNSO Membership, including
DNSO itself.

The DNSO GA Members clarification does not come from the Secretariat
but originate from the NC work in October-November 1999, after 
the first election to ICANN Board and before the first election 
of the GA Chair and Alternate.
See at:
http://www.dnso.org/dnso/notes/19991126.DNSO-GAchair-procedures.html
       A member of the GA shall be any natural person who 
       at the time of the nomination (or endorsement
       as set forth below) is:
        *  subscribed to the GA-ga or GA-announce lists; 
        *  subscribed to a working group list; or 
        *  a Names Council member; or 
        *  a member of a DNSO Constituency. 
       Note: A person with multiple email addresses is only counted once.

Because of difficulties to determine DNSO Constituencies membership,
a practical problem arises for the GA votes. When the term "vote"
is used, one needs to determine an electorate list, therefore a concept
of DNSO GA Voters.
In June 2000, after several months of discussions on membership
function, the Voting Registry was set up, see at:
http://www.dnso.org/dnso/notes/2000.GA-voting-registry.html

This document determines that the DNSO GA Voters are those
DNSO GA Members who subscribe to the Voting Registry.

The first DNSO GA vote which started on 26th June 2000,
was about "Voting startup for the General Assembly of the DNSO".
See "b01" in "Administration Documents of the General Assembly of the DNSO"
http://www.dnso.org/dnso/gaindex.html (access from the main page).
This was the first vote of DNSO GA Voters, implicitely ratifying
the Voting Registry concept and usage.

Concerning Mr. Steinberg, he is registered on the announce@dnso.org list,
therefore he qualify for nomination and election.

And eventually your last question:
> Does the Secretariat have any objection to posting a full list of the current 
> GA membership?

Yes. There are several reasons.

It is against the DNSO GA rules as adopted, see:
http://www.dnso.org/dnso/notes/2000.GA-ga-rules-v0.4.html
     For purposes of its internal operation, the General Assembly 
     maintains mailing lists.
     These are as follows:
           - announce@dnso.org for announcements from the DNSO
           - ga@dnso.org for discussion among GA members on GA business
     Both lists are open for subscription by any E-mail address.
     Both lists are archived.
     The membership of the lists is not made public.

Additionaly, two recollections from history:

1. It is against rules for announce@dnso.org list.
   Since its origin the members of this list are granted that their names 
   and e-mail addresses will not be disclosed. They are silent participants,
   and their anonymity is respected.
2. Originally the "who" access was permitted to ga@dnso.org list,
   and any member of that list could know who is on the list. 
   Because of abuses, this facility was closed, and since then 
   the Secretariat publishes weekly statistics on number of participants 
   to the DNSO lists. 
   See "Number of participants in the DNSO mailing lists over time" 
   http://www.dnso.org/statistics/dnsostatistics.html (access from 
   the main page).

Elisabeth Porteneuve
DNSO Secretariat
--

> From owner-ga@dnso.org Sat Jul 28 17:15 MET 2001
> From: DannyYounger@cs.com
> Message-ID: <ad.df367de.28943031@cs.com>
> Date: Sat, 28 Jul 2001 11:11:45 EDT
> Subject: [ga] Who is a GA member?
> To: Elisabeth.Porteneuve@cetp.ipsl.fr
> CC: ga@dnso.org
> MIME-Version: 1.0
> Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit
> 
> Dear Elisabeth,
> 
> One of our members, Eric Dierker, has posed a question that should not remain 
> unanswered;  Eric writes:  "Mr. Steinberg is not registered to vote in our 
> registry.  Just how is he a member of the GA?  Or is he and if so why?"  
> http://www.dnso.org/clubpublic/ga-full/Arc08/msg00136.html
> 
> In our documents, we have a statement issued by the Secretariat that states:  
> "The DNSO General Assembly is composed of those persons who want to be 
> members of that assembly. At present, this includes "ex-officio" the 
> subscribers to the GA-lists, the participants to the DNSO Constituencies and 
> the participants to the Working Groups."  
> http://www.dnso.org/dnso/notes/2000.GA-voting-registry.html
> 
> By this definition, Mr. Steinberg (in light of his acceptance statement) is 
> legitimately a member of the Assembly (in that his desire to participate has 
> been noted).  We must however ask  -- has this definition of membership ever 
> been ratified by the Assembly?
> 
> Even if we accept the "At present" definition which cites subscribers to 
> lists and participants in constituencies (there are no currently active 
> Working Groups), we still don't have a readily determined answer to Eric's 
> question, as there is no list posted anywhere that states precisely who is 
> currently a GA member.  
> 
> Does the Secretariat have any objection to posting a full list of the current 
> GA membership?
>   
> --
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> 

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