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

["Roberto Gaetano" <roberto@xxxxxxxxx>]

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