[Internal-cg] Charter commenting

[Milton L Mueller]

Adiel and I may agree on the confusing nature of the message, but I think our responses point in opposite directions. 

My view was that we should be consistent about relying on the community representatives instead of another ICANN-administered comment period - I believe this is appropraite for the charter ONLY.  We should not provide an opportunity for dozens of many random emails and a bunch of formal comments wordsmithing the draft via a comment list. We lack the time and resources to process a bunch of written comments and still make progress on the other things.  Instead, we should encourage people to review the draft and convey any major concerns they have about the charter to their representatives on the ICG. I think the charter needs to be finalized asap and we need to concentrate on actually doing our job. 

The charter as it now exists has roots in a prior comment period on the composition and scope of the ICG. I think we have the authority to finalize that process ourselves. The process of drafting the charter was highly transparent and the draft has been out there in front of our communities for three weeks now. Asking for a comment period on the charter essentially turns the clock back to July 18 and freezes our activity for a month on all other fronts if we are to be really consistent about the fact that we don't have a charter yet. I also think it is confusing to position ourselves in a  strange middle ground in which we are asking for formal wrirtten comments on a list but telling people we don't want to make major changes. Either we are opening up the entire draft charter for comment, criticism and redrafting, or we are saying that we basically have a charter and asking whether anyone has major objections to it that we haven't taken into account. I favor the latter approach.

--MM

> -----Original Message-----
> From: Adiel Akplogan [mailto:adiel at afrinic.net]
> Sent: Wednesday, August 06, 2014 10:31 AM
> To: Milton L Mueller
> Cc: Alissa Cooper; internal-cg at icann.org
> Subject: Re: [Internal-cg] Charter commenting
> 
> On Aug 6, 2014, at 16:37 PM, Milton L Mueller <mueller at syr.edu> wrote:
> 
> > I am not sure I understand this:
> >
> >> -----Original Message-----
> >> It is the strong preference
> >> of the ICG that comments about the charter from the public be
> >> submitted via existing IANA-related community processes, and not
> >> through the link provided below.
> >
> > If we don't want people to provide comments through that link, why
> provide the link? I suspect many people will be confused by this.
> 
> +1.
> 
> In fact I'm wondering why do we want to make this particular comment
> related to the ICG organisation diffuse through the community process (sorry
> but I may have missed a discussion on this while offline)?
> 
> - a.