[ALAC] Bikeshedding [was Re: Open Public Comment Proceedings]

Seun Ojedeji seun.ojedeji at gmail.com
Sat Sep 2 21:37:03 UTC 2017


Hello Alan,

Thanks for your response. I think one of the challenges (which by the way I
am also guilty of) is the lack of significant active At-Large folks in
those WGs.

My question then was whether those active in it can help flag the issues
while staff develop documents that provides background explanation which
then helps those who are not quite active to have the opportunity to
contribute which may then serve as sufficient information to improve
participation in the WGs.

Regards

Sent from my mobile
Kindly excuse brevity and typos

On Sep 2, 2017 8:09 PM, "Alan Greenberg" <alan.greenberg at mcgill.ca> wrote:

Seun, I will note that there is a page of upcoming public comments -
https://www.icann.org/resources/pages/upcoming-2012-02-25-en. Perhaps we
have people who would be willing to review that regularly and identify
issues that we want staff to brief us on.

And of course, it would be good if we had active WGs on topics that we know
are going to be in out view.

Alan


At 02/09/2017 01:24 PM, Seun Ojedeji wrote:

Hello Evan,

Thanks for this and for raising a point about what you think we should be
focusing our resources upon. May I suggest you kindly provide references to
the discussion you refer so that people like myself can also follow-up.

I think we should consider a issue triggering approach to help focus our
discussion and spur up interest. What I mean by this is that folks
participating in certain working group discussion that find something they
believe ALAC should weigh in on can flag/raise it and that can form
discussion topics during ALAC calls and on the list. I think that approach
worked well during the transition.

That said, I wonder whether once someone raises an issue of importance,
staff can be in a position to provide brief documentation that helps others
have some background understanding of the issue in other to better
contribute to the discussion. Overall we should not be waiting for PC
before ALAC puts in position statements to WG and/or advice to the Board

Regards

Sent from my mobile
Kindly excuse brevity and typos

On Sep 2, 2017 5:20 PM, "Evan Leibovitch" <evan at telly.org> wrote:
On 2 September 2017 at 09:05, < h.raiche at internode.on.net> wrote:

I've had a look at all three, and am not sure they are of real importance
to ALAC


​Holly is exactly right.

At-Large has a scarcity of volunteer resources ­-- notably in those who
have the time, skills and background necessary to analyze such matters and
write cogent, relevant responses.​


While it is wholly appropriate of staff to ensure that we don't
accidentally miss anything, it is also incumbent upon At-Large (and
especially its leadership) to show the discipline necessary to ignore that
minutiae and concentrate on the larger picture of how ICANN actions impact
end-users globally. We have not always succeeded in this discipline.

In fact, yesterday a software developer friend of mine introduced me to a
term I hadn't heard before, that IMO well describes ALAC's historic
tendency to get caught up in the flurry of responding to ICANN's trivia and
losing sight of the real bylaw-mandated purpose we are here to serve:
bikeshedding <http://communitymgt.wikia.com/wiki/Bikeshedding> .

Right now I am involved in a GNSO working group in which domain industry
representatives are insisting to pore over every word of the Geneva
Convention to determine whether the Red Cross has the right to ask that its
names not be in the pool of domains for sale in gTLDs. At least from an
end-user standpoint this is absolutely absurd; we don't need this kind of
time wastage for At-Large to tell the Board and community of ICANN that
enabling commercial (ab)use of Red Cross/Crescent/Diamond/etc domain names
is morally repugnant.

Many other examples exist in At-Large. It most reliably emerges any time
the phrase "public interest" is invoked in our midst.

Industry advocates paid to divert stakeholders from the big picture have
created an ICANN process designed to distract and waste resources from
those of us without the financial incentive or means to keep up.

This is bikeshedding by design. Resist.

Cheers,
Evan


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