[At-Large] Give it a break

[Vittorio Bertola]

Kieren McCarthy ha scritto:
> Every decision-making organ in the history of the world has relied on the
> use of representatives to put forward the views of a large number of people.
> That larger group of people then seek to persuade the representatives of
> their point and ask them to enter it into discussions. 
> 
> In the most effective form of accountability and representativeness so far -
> democracy - those representatives are voted in, and can be voted out in
> periodic elections. This is the model that ALAC follows - or should be
> following - if it is to provide useful policy input. 

I tend to disagree on this, for at least two reasons.

One is specific - the ALAC also has an internal mailing list, which 
committee members heavily use; in fact, most of the discussions inside 
the group tend to happen on the internal list rather than on this one. 
So I don't see how any level of noise on this list can hamper the ALAC's 
ability to work - in fact, in the model you expose, ALAC members could 
just ignore this list altogether.

The other one is philosophical - even if I was one of the people who 
designed this model, and even if one of the reasons for it was also to 
provide an intermediate, representative point where votes could be 
taken, you can't just conclude that the ALAC has a blank mandate to do 
and say whatever they like without consulting on each issue and only 
being accountable when needing reelection. This traditional, 19th 
century model is in deep crisis almost everywhere in the world. 
Increasingly, people are unwilling to delegate to intermediate 
bureaucracy layers. The Internet is the place where this happens more 
than everywhere else, as things tend to happen by consensus and in 
several cases there is no real authority unless it is continuously 
recognized by the bottom.

If your problem is that you want messages by Mr. Williams to be filtered 
out, let the ALAC adopt netiquette rules under which his messages, as 
well as those by anyone else, can be judged. But this does not imply 
shutting down lines of dialogue between the ALAC and its constituents.
-- 
vb.                   Vittorio Bertola - vb [a] bertola.eu   <--------
-------->  finally with a new website at http://bertola.eu/  <--------