[NA-Discuss] ALAC Review Draft is published

[Evan Leibovitch]

Bret Fausett wrote:
>>    * Create two new ALAC positions, appointed by the Nominating
>>      Committee, both from Asia, to reflect that region's increased
>>      proportion of global Internet users
>>     
>
> I understand the thinking here, but I can see some downside to  
> "proportional representation," either by absolute population or  
> population of Internet users.
>   
I'm curious to know peoples' feelings about the other side of this, in
that they have chosen to bring these new ALAC members in through the
NomComm rather than elected by RALOs.

This recommendation, should it be accepted, further increases the
proportion of ALAC members who are appointed rather than elected, which
IMO reduces accountability and reverses the move of ALAC from a bunch of
internally selected - experts to a true grassroots movement. Am I the
only one bothered by this?

> First, are you going to take away a representative from Africa under the same theory?
>   
They were not only looking at raw numbers, but also potential for
growth. So Africa is still seen as high numbers, even if most of that is
_potential_ rather than current.

> Second, even within a region, the ALAC representatives aren't  
> distributed in accord with the population. If you have proportional  
> representation across the five regions, don't you then have to do it  
> within the regions? If the point of increasing the AP ALAC members is  
> to reflect the population, doesn't same principle dictate that of the  
> five proposed Asia-Pacific representatives, China always have at least  
> three and India at least one? I see no real way of making this work in  
> a manner that reflects the population. Five ALAC representatives from  
> English-speaking Australia and New Zealand wouldn't really address the  
> problems the Review Committee is trying to solve.
>   
Then there are the Asean countries, which would get totally squeezed out
between the natural gravitation of the English-speaking countries (plus
Japan) and the high populations of India and China.

I suppose this is why they put their faith in the NomComm to keep the
situation geographically balanced rather than keep it to democratic
numbers games alone. Still, there must be a better way to do this.

> Finally, has there been a complaint that some needs are being unmet by  
> the current representatives? What are those complaints? If there are  
> none, perhaps we're trying to solve a problem that doesn't exist.
>   
Good point. Maybe the other regions have privately expressed
dissatisfation with those aggressive North Americans and want to give a
bigger (if not louder) voice elsewhere. Unfortunately (at least from my
perspective) if it hadn't been for NARALO then ALAC would have
completely bowed down to other interests on issues such as tasting, so I
don't see how this will have a positive effect on ALAC's ability to
fulfil its mandate.

There are voices here who say ALAC was too compromising on tasting even
_with_ the pressure from NARALO to get rid of the AGP. Imagine what the
position would have been had the voice of NARALO been further diminished.

- Evan