Dear Colleagues:
What Kent is calling to our attention is the need to create a true
constitution for PAB. There are many people whose lives will not
seriously be impacted by what we --the members of the PAB and the
gTLD MoUvement generally-- say and do. There are many others who
are seriously frightened as all get-out that we might represent the bow
wave of a new internationalist movement. The fact that this movement is
driven by technology rather than ideology does not defuse peoples'
concerns. We need to improve the legitimacy of the entire gTLD
MoUvement, and that means enlisting support from the World
responsibly, and with the limited objective of ensuring a robust, scalable
Internet.
I believe Kent has correctly identified the crucial consideration as the
representative (or not) nature of the PAB. We should not lose sight,
however, of the fact that rough consensus contains its own
safeguards. I believe that PAB works best when the participants come
to the discussion eager to find a way to meld policy differences into a
workable compromise. PAB is essentially a deliberative and consultative
body, not a representative, vote-taking assembly.
The weight that should be given to a participant's thoughts should be
determined by the intrinsic worth of those thoughts. The fact that a
participant is designated by a more or less significant economic entity is
something to be taken into account but should never displace the
principal that PAB acts in the public interest and for the growth and
advancement of the Internet.
At the same time, a "prejudice" might really reflect the fact that a
participant is especially impacted by a particular policy. If an identifia=
ble
constituency (for example, ISPs as a whole) were to arise within the
PAB membership, it _should_ have a way of securing a voice in the
Consensus WG.
Hence I suggest that what is needed for PAB to function effectively is a
revised way of finding our rough consensus. I maintain that
"consensus" does not come from a ballot box. Consensus might be
found in the participants' acceptance of "majority rule" before submitting
an issue to a vote; but the ballot box does not produce consensus. In
fact, the ballot box is the result of consensus, not its source.
Note that consensus is not unanimity, either. There will always be a
radical few (or many, for that matter) whose voices are intentionally
disharmonious. Our search for consensus will need to filter out those
voices while remaining open to the chance that they might really be the
sane ones :-)
What I believe is needed is that PAB be driven by a very special working
group: the Consensus WG. The purpose of the Consensus WG is to
identify the issues which PAB needs to address, monitor the state of the
discussion to gauge the emergence of differences and agreements, and
participate, as needed, to identify and develop support for beneficial
actions by PAB.
I do not believe a CORE member should be disqualified from membership
in the Consensus WG, but we should make sure that no one set of
prejudices obtains a dominant position in PAB. The Consensus WG can
promote this objective since it can recognize, for example, that all of the
people pushing for opening the root to unlimited TLD's on a first-come,
first-served basis, are the eDNS Registrars who obviously have their
own agenda.
The tricky part is the selection of the Consensus Working Group. The
Working Group should be large enough to be inclusive of a wide variety
of viewpoints and backgrounds. Ideally, it should be self-defining, with a
core (excuse the word) group of participants co-opting others and
securing the rough consensus of the membership that this is a good
starting point for the consensus WG. The initial bootstrap group would
serve as a nominating committee. Note, also, that this restricts the
conflict of interest issue to the Consensus WG. And the significance of
the Conflict of Interest is diminished because all participants will be
aware of the particular agenda of the other participants.
Summary
PAB is about discussion and thinking, not counting votes. We need to
restructure the way in which we arrive at and measure consensus,
because when all is said and done, it does not matter to the outside
world how I or any other member of PAB votes. What matters is
whether what we say makes sense or not.
Sincerely,
Kevin J. Connolly