[Mmwg] Reviewing the discussions

[Avri Doria]

On 25 jan 2006, at 10.19, Vittorio Bertola wrote:

> Il giorno mer, 25/01/2006 alle 10.11 -0500, Milton Mueller ha scritto:
>> I am strongly opposed to having the Bureau/Council adopt reports. I
>> suspect Luc would be, too. That sets them up as a detached,
>> free-standing group that would inevitably draft, modify and publish
>> reports on their own.
>
> No, why? Actually, it is a key point that documents (or reports or
> however you call them) are developed in an open environment, and then
> get to the formal group only to be approved or rejected. You could  
> write
> this down very clearly in the rules of the game: the Council can  
> start a
> working group, but then the working group works according to open
> procedures, while the Council sits and waits. The Chair of the working
> group calls consensus, and sends the document to the Council for
> approval or rejection. In this latter case, the Council is required to
> state valid reasons for rejecting and starting one more iteration.

i would actually recommend modifying this a bit.

once the working group has finished its report, it is the plenary  
that should review it.

if there is a an end role for the bureau, i see it more in assuring  
that everything was done correctly in the process of producing the  
report.  i do not, however, see it as being responsible for its  
content or for approving its content.  that role should belong to the  
plenary.

>
>> It is very much a WGIG model you propose. The Bureau/Council is just
>> another WGIG.
>
> Not at all. The WGIG was actually drafting, not just acting as the  
> final
> checkpoint, nor it had open WGs. In fact, I am just proposing to  
> adopt,
> almost verbatim, the IETF/IESG model.

i think this is a good model to adapt, but with some important  
differences.

for example the bureau could be composed of stakeholder  
representatives, and not technical expert/managers.

and rather then a noncom process to pick the members of the bureau  
the stakeholders might pick their representative according to their  
own methods (maybe a vote, maybe a nomcom or maybe something i can't  
envision at the moment)


>
>> I would prefer something more open, more participatory, less
>> susceptibly to domination by a small clique.
>
> I think that one key point in which we differ is that you think that
> more formalization leads to more capture, while I think that more
> formalization leads to less capture.

i think that there are many methods of gaining capture and that there  
are ways to capture an anarchic process and thee are ways to capture  
a formal process.  i think mechanisms to avoid capture are vary  
depending on the structure picked.  e.g. Robert's rule of order are  
designed to avoid capture, yet the same rules can be used to  
effectively capture. (not that i am recommending Robert's rules, or  
even Bob's rules - the more informal version of Robert's - which  
incidentally seem harder to capture)

a.