[governance] Fwd: IGC Membership list

Sat Jun 28 14:19:52 EDT 2008

I must say that I agree with Bill on this and have myself endured the
destruction of several significant on/offline organizations through the
repeated intervention of those wishing to destroy the group for personal
reasons and willing/able to use as their IMD of choice an over-punctilious
referencing to the "rules/constitution", acute legalism and widely
proclaimed adherence to vaguely defined consensus/democratic principles
where such rigourous documentation/legal specification was not the original
capacity/intent of the group in the drafting of the rules/constitution.
(Also, as here they were able to draw on support from well-intentioned
others who agreed with one or another of the laundry list of legalisms
presented by the destruction crew and which led to further confusion,
marching briskly down blind alleys, and general diversion from the purpose
and over-all direction of the group(s).

Where there are shared values/norms/goals the relatively minor issues of
"legality" which have been pre-occupying this group for the last month can
be easily managed with a chuckle and a shrugging of the shoulders (although
it is necessarily much much more difficult to communicate/achieve this in
virtual form). Where the intent is to disrupt/destroy the group (read
trollism) no amount of "discussion"/argumentation can do very much since the
original document to which everyone is referring was drafted by
well-intentioned people in haste rather than highly paid constitutional
lawyers sitting for months in air-conditioned offices.

Having just met a number (in the context of the Seoul OECD Ministerial) of
business or government folks observing us on this list, I can assure you all
that our collective behaviour in this is not winning us admirers among those
whose support we would look for in the future as CS evolves in these areas.

I haven't been following these discussions in detail but would again call
for the question and would this time strongly urge whoever is in authority
here (Parminder?) to follow whatever process is necessary to find out those
who would self-identify as CS based on the original values/intent of the
charter, have some sort of formal identification of those for voting
purposes (membership in the mailing list as a criteria can't work), have a
vote or whatever  and move on.

MG

-----Original Message-----
From: William Drake [mailto:william.drake at graduateinstitute.ch] 
Sent: June 28, 2008 1:44 AM
To: governance at lists.cpsr.org; Avri Doria
Subject: Re: [governance] Fwd: IGC Membership list

Hi Avri,

Nice seeing you in Paris.  Now time for some friendly online disagreement,
oh joy.

On Fri, Jun 27, 2008 at 6:23 PM, Avri Doria <avri at psg.com> wrote:
> Hi,
>
> I think the problem we are having is 2 (or probably more) different 
> ideas of membership.
>
> One is that that for all intents and purpose all those on the list are 
> full members in everything but voting.  For voting one must hold to
charter in
> order to vote.    I..e they can particpate in consensus discussions and
> everything else - except a vote.

I wasn't aware that anyone has ever had this idea or had seriously advanced
it over the past 5 + years.  Maybe I've failed to read between someone's
lines and into their heads.

The caucus was set up during WSIS as part of a larger CS coalition with the
explicit intent of promoting public interest positions on IG.  We negotiated
texts and made interventions in the governments' debates that reflected
shared values, and we were small enough to know who each other was. During
WSIS I the list membership and caucus were largely coterminous, but from
early 04 the former grew rapidly to constitute an overwhelming majority of
subscribers that had no interest in collaboratively promoting public
interest positions on IG in international forums and, inter alia, did not
sign the charter when invited to.  They (includes staff folks from
international business groups, ICANN, UN agencies, governments, etc) are
here because they're interested in IG issues or at least have reason to keep
an eye on the discussions, not because they believe themselves to be in the
caucus. Since they're not confused on the point, I don't see how anyone else
could be.  This is the first I've heard of it.

> Another is that there are two type of list members, those who are 
> Caucus members and those who are not.  And that at any moment in time 
> we should be able to distinguish real members from list members.

Maybe not at any given moment, but perhaps once, for a first time since the
charter was floated years ago, especially since we don't even seem to have a
list of people who subscribed to it then.

> The charter currently defines membership in the first way.  Some seem 
> to want some version of the second definition.  If there is a majority 
> who want to change the charter it can be changed. And there are subtle 
> changes or major change we could make if that is what we are into.

Huh?  The charter doesn't say join the listserv and you're in the caucus
except for voting.  It says, "The members of the IGC are individuals, acting
in personal capacity, who subscribe to the charter of the caucus."  Full
stop.  The charter would only need to be changed if we wanted to adopt your
first position, that anyone who simply signs onto a listserv is hence a
caucus member.

> My issue is with living up to the charter we have and changing it 
> explicitly if that is what we want to do.

Parminder is simply asking who considers themselves to be in the
caucus. I can't fathom how that violates the charter.   And if we
cannot bring ourselves to say who is in a group, I don't think we should
pretend that the group exists.

> As for trolls, I would think that netiquette is netiquette and all 
> list members are the same in that respect.  Or do you suggest that a 
> voting member of the caucus should have more permission to engage in 
> bad netiquette then a non voting member?

No, I did not suggest this.  On an open list one obviously could not have a
rule allowing one group to behave more badly than another.  But at a
personal level I'm more prepared to endure diatribes etc from someone who is
committed to promoting public interest positions and trying to make the
caucus function to that end than I am from someone who's here to promote
other agendas or even disrupt caucus efforts. That's just my choice, and
knowing who's in the caucus would facilitate this bottom up, self-governing
perception management. Others of course make other choices and if they don't
care about the sources and objectives of bad netiquette and even trollism,
that's up to them.

Best,

Bill

>
>
> On 27 Jun 2008, at 18:06, William Drake wrote:
>
>> On Fri, Jun 27, 2008 at 9:47 AM, Jeanette Hofmann <jeanette at wzb.eu>
>> wrote:
>>>
>>> Hi,
>>> now that Avri explained the problem to me, I support Avri's 
>>> objection. Through the act of voting, people acknowledge the charter 
>>> and agree to be members of this caucus - not the other way around.
>>
>> But we never vote.  So we have no idea which of the 360 list 
>> subscribers are caucus members, which affects how one deals with 
>> consensus building, troll disruptions, etc.
>>
>> BD
>> _
***********************************************************
William J. Drake
Director, Project on the Information
 Revolution and Global Governance/PSIO
 Graduate Institute for International Studies
 Geneva, Switzerland
william.drake at graduateinstitute.ch
http://tinyurl.com/38dcxf
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