[NA-Discuss] Revised - Internal ALAC Rules of procedure

[Wendy Seltzer]

Evan Leibovitch wrote:
> Wendy Seltzer wrote:
> 
>> Rule 12.2 -- I don't think a quorum should persist after members leave a
>> meeting. There's already too great a tendency for ICANN meetings to drag
>> on.
>>   
> I'll respectfully disagree, only because I've seen instances where a
> bathroom break has lead to a flurry of pushing through something that
> the person(s) temporarily absent didn't want. This is certainly a
> worst-case ill-will scenario but I have seen it happen.
> 
> The flip side is that people, fed up with a meeting's progress, walk in
> order to break quorum and render the rest of the meeting impotent. While
> this is also undesirable, even less desirable is giving the remaining
> people the ability to push through votes without legitimate mandate. In
> any case, any of these situations indicates a poisoned atmosphere that
> needs to be corrected anyway.

What about a compromise re: quorum, e.g., where a meeting is scheduled
for a definite time period, members leaving after the end of that time
period will not be counted in the quorum.

--Wendy
> 
> Look at the discussions we've had internally in NA about even the role
> of abstentions. I don't think that any agreement achieved without a
> quorum can be legitimately considered a consensus.
> 
>> Working with documents: The committee should delegate the drafting and
>> re-drafting of documents to a secretariat or subcommittee, which should
>> not attempt to make substantive decisions without the group, but should
>> use list alternatives that have some support in [brackets] for the group
>> as a whole to discuss and resolve.
>>   
> Agreed. Of course, this process assumes that people who would (and
> should) offer various alternative ideas should speak out during the
> formative stage, and it was my impression that ALAC preparatory work was
> lacking. I guess it would be up to the drafting subcommittee to suitably
> poke the committee members for comment in advance, so that objections
> aren't all heard at the last minute.
> 
> - Evan
> 
> 


-- 
Wendy Seltzer -- wendy at seltzer.org
phone: +1.914.374.0613
Visiting Fellow, Oxford Internet Institute
Fellow, Berkman Center for Internet & Society
http://cyber.law.harvard.edu/seltzer.html
http://www.chillingeffects.org/