[council] Regarding dealing with inappropriate behaviour

[Sophia B]

> an only regret that council members spend their valuable time on
> this whole topic of WG membership, failing to clearly address some
> legitimate questions at inception



I utterly agree with this statement.  Also completely fail to see who is
misbehaving in this instance, and the attention given to its deliberations
on potentiality!

S

On 01/03/07, Mawaki Chango <ki_chango at yahoo.com> wrote:
>
> Bruce,
>
> Though I appreciate your experience and valuable input below, I don't
> even understand how we've got to debating about excluding people for
> inappropriate behavior. Has some such thing happened in one of the
> WG, or are we pre-suspecting that some people may not be civil? Any
> reason for that?
>
> I an only regret that council members spend their valuable time on
> this whole topic of WG membership, failing to clearly address some
> legitimate questions at inception.
>
> Bruce, allow me to remind us of a couple of points:
>
> 1) The distinction you made between WG and TF, while setting up the
> IDN WG: the WGs are not policy-making or even policy-recommendation
> group (e.g., they may conduct straw polls, but that is not a vote on
> a decision.) They are meant to clarify issues and identify those the
> WG members think the Council should examine further for, possibly,
> policy recommendations (through PDP or simple/single resolutions,)
> etc. As a consequence, I'd like to clarify that the choices made by a
> WG should not preclude by any means the possibility for the Council
> to further discuss or examine an issue left out of the WG report or
> proposals, especially at the motivated request of any council member.
>
> 2) In "designing aloud" (so to speak) the WG general rules (I must
> say I don't like this piecemeal approach we seem to adopt,) apart
> from the size problem, I don't necessarily see why the membership
> shouldn't be open to any interesting parties (especially in the light
> of the WG function recalled above.) I was told that was the case in
> the old DNSO days, and maybe even early GNSO ones, and I'm not under
> the impression that we've been dramatically more efficient since then
> (I consider respectability, visibility or level of profile a
> different point.) I don't think the observer category resolve any
> problem. We could rather consider the following principles:
> - ensure to each constituency a minimum number of seats (e.g., 3)
> - open the membership to any interested party or individual (maybe
> subject to a statement of purpose and interests, etc.)
> - define a maximum size for a WG.
>
> That size needs not to be one fixed number but a range of numbers. Or
> if we want to make the procedure clear cut, we could also ask the
> constituencies to submit whether they wish to retain their minimum
> number of seats and fill them in at a later stage, or they wish to
> give them up. But those are implementations details that can be
> refined or crafted one way or the other.
>
> Best,
>
> Mawaki
>
>
> --- Bruce Tonkin <Bruce.Tonkin at melbourneit.com.au> wrote:
>
> > Hello Chuck,
> >
> > > In that regard, we
> > > may want to consider some means of dealing with non-constructive
> > > behavior both for observers and members.
> >
> > I tend to agree that a chair should attempt to deal with
> > inappropriate
> > behaviour, bearing in mind the wishes of the whole group.
> > Ie the decision is not made autocratically, but based on documented
> > guidelines for acceptable behaviour as well as seeking the views of
> > other members of the group.
> >
> > I think the Council then is simply able to deal with issues on an
> > appeal
> > basis - which could be handled in a similar way to that of the
> > Board
> > appeal mechanisms - e.g a subgroup of the Council can investigate
> > and
> > report to the whole Council.
> >
> > However - I would hope that these situations are rare events.  The
> > best
> > approach is to stop inappropriate behaviour as soon as it happens,
> > rather than let it gradually grow amongst multiple participants (ie
> > such
> > behaviour tends to escalate).  If a problem is let run too long,
> > then
> > you will always be blamed for singling out one person, when other
> > people
> > have also been behaving inappropriately.
> >
> > The rough rule of thumb is that was is not acceptable in a small
> > face-to-face environment in terms of language and courtesy is not
> > acceptable in a telephone conference or mailing list when people
> > are
> > further apart.
> >
> > I have noticed that when a group of people have been "fighting"
> > amongst
> > themselves on a mailing list and then meet face-to-face, the bad
> > feelings are often carried over.  In contrast where a group has
> > initially met face-to-face a few times and the group members have
> > built
> > some respect for each others opinions and good intentions, then
> > mailing
> > lists discussions are generally much more civil.   For example, the
> > Council meets face-to-face as a group regularly, as do most of the
> > more
> > active members of the registrar constituency.  Subsequently mailing
> > list
> > and teleconference discussions tend to be fairly civil despite the
> > fact
> > that the participants may be strong competitors in business, or
> > have
> > strongly opposing views on a matter.
> >
> >
> > Regards,
> > Bruce Tonkin
> >
> >
> >
> >
> >
>
>
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