Re: [gnso-vi-feb10] REVISED Proposal-support poll

["Mike O'Connor" <mike@xxxxxxxxxx>]

argh.

i wish this email list was faster -- there's about a 10 minute delay and our 
emails crossed.

i don't disagree with Roberto (naturally).  but i went ahead and closed the 
poll based on a submission from outside the working group, and based on the 
email thread of yesterday and i think i'll stick with that for now.  there's 
another problem with those polls -- anybody from anywhere on the Internet can 
log on to the poll and change entries.  *that* came as something of a surprise 
and is a bit harder to audit/manage than separating out WG people vs non-WG 
people.

so let's leave it like this -- *anybody* can send me an email with their views 
(including people outside the WG) and i'll post them to the poll.  and next 
time i'll tune up the security a little bit.

sorry about the crossed wires.

mikey


On Jun 12, 2010, at 4:36 PM, Roberto Gaetano wrote:

> 
> Mikey,
> 
>> as your co-chair and scribe, i don't have any objection to 
>> others taking the poll.  but it would make my life a lot 
>> easier if they indicated that they are not WG members when 
>> they fill out their entry so i can tell who is who when i 
>> summarize the poll.  i admit, i worry a little bit about 
>> craziness and pranks, but i'm willing to wait and cross that 
>> bridge if we come to it.
>> 
>> Roberto?  you have any thoughts either way on this?
> 
> I confess that I am seriously puzzled by the exchanges I see in the last
> couple of days wrt the poll.
> Personally, I have no objections whatsoever to "non-members" taking the
> poll, for two reasons, and with a caveat.
> The first reason, is that you cannot prevent it. Although this might not
> seem a good reason per se, it simply means that I see no point in putting an
> additional burden in terms of control, count, identity check, aso. for
> something that is not a vote, but a poll.
> The second one, maybe more substantial, is that I do believe that there are
> people who did not subscribe to the WG because they knew that they could not
> afford the commitment of tons of emails, need for quick responses to issues,
> two weekly teleconferences (maybe at impossible hours from their time
> zones), but that would like to express an opinion anyway. And I believe that
> their opinion is useful to the co-chairs in assessing the situation.
> The caveat is, surprise surprise, the same one that Mikey has expressed: a
> way to identify them as "external contributors" to the poll, not WG members.
> Anyway, the reactions I have read, like the reasons for not allowing
> external folks to participate to the poll (as they could "stuff the ballot
> box") is IMHO disproportionate. And the reason is that this is not a "ballot
> box", but a "poll". When the co-chairs will count the preferences, assuming
> that we will do it in a formal way, it will not be with the spirit of
> declaring a "winner", not even a "majority candidate" that will be in a sort
> of pole position for a compromise solution. Nothing at all of this. I cannot
> speak for my colleague co-chair, but personally what I was looking for was
> not the first choice of you folks, which I probably could have easily
> guessed without having to go through a poll, but which are the grey areas
> (actually, the "yellow" areas). What are the possibilities to create a
> common ground, even limited.
> 
> What I see, is a dicomforting scenario. What is upsetting to me is not so
> much the clear cut in two opposite camps (those who favour RACK+ are against
> JN+2 or FreeTrade, and viceversa), but other things. For most, actually
> close to all, members the opinions on the highest ranking proposals are
> either green or red, with very little yellow margin. But that was
> predictable. What is upsetting is that members of the WG are starting
> saying: "But xyz did not vote, did he have the chance to vote, it would have
> been +1 for proposal abc". Folks, for the nth time, this is not a "vote". I
> do not care if proposal P1 or P2 is liked by a few people more than proposal
> P3 or P4. What I care is what are the elements of proposals P1, P2, P3 or P4
> that are not acceptable to some, in order to go to a next phase in which we
> can see what we can do to smoothen some aspects of the proposals in order to
> reduce the concern and make them consider less "risky".
> But I see that in spite of the work done so far, we are still in
> beauty-contest mode. We are not here, to repeat a metaphore used a few weeks
> ago, to choose the best molecule, but to break the molecules into atoms,
> pick the atoms that are acceptable (or at least not violently opposed), and
> build with them the molecule of consensus.
> To explain better the way I see things, let me make an example.
> One question is not whether we should have or not VI, but under what
> circumstances, and with which safeguards, the opponents of VI would feel
> sufficiently protected from the risks they see in VI to accept a limited
> test. Another question is not whether small TLDs should be obliged to have
> ICANN accredited Registrars or not, but rather under which circumstances
> could an exception be made, and what are the conditions and risks that we
> need to take into account before defining which is the extent of the
> exception.
> Analysing the result of the poll so far, I see that among the people who
> state they cannot live with the status quo (Board Motion and/or DAGv4) we
> have friends of proposal abc and foes of proposal xyz, and friends of
> proposal xyz and foes of proposal abc. Knowing that if we cannot come to a
> consensus, you will not get the proposal you like, but the status quo you
> don't like, I count on you to come together and forget about your favourite
> proposal, and help crafting a "new thing" (a "bossa nova", as the Brazilians
> would say) that you and others can live with. To replace the status quo you
> cannot live with.
> 
> It is too late to get something done in this direction before Brussels. But
> I count very much on the F2F in Brussels (meeting on Saturday and bar
> anytime) to narrow the gap we have as of today.
> 
> Cheers,
> Roberto

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