[NCSG-PC] SSC process and my status in NCSG PC

[Tapani Tarvainen]

Replying to selected points from several messages inline.

On Thu, Apr 06, 2017 at 03:54:01PM -0400, Stephanie Perrin (stephanie.perrin at mail.utoronto.ca) wrote:

> This is not a case of washing dirty laundry in my view.

My apologies for poor choice of words and inappropriate accusatory tone.

> You recused yourself from this process Tapani, you have not been subject to
> the chaos that ensued.

Yes. I assume you don't mean the chaos resulted from my recusal, but
perhaps that was indeed the case - perhaps I could have prevented it,
perhaps it was my fault. Perhaps I should not have recused myself, but
at the time I felt I couldn't do anything else. Or maybe I just took
the easy way out. In any case I must accept my guilt, that the failure
of the process was in part my fault, too.

> Perhaps we should just wait for a week or two until things calm down
> a bit to investigate how we can select our third member of the
> committee.

A timeout at this point sounds like a good idea.

On Thu, Apr 06, 2017 at 11:50:36PM -0400, avri doria (avri at acm.org) wrote:

> what was flawed was the lack of trust and the behavior of some
> individuals. And no process is going to account for that. If ICANN
> has taught me anything is that any process can be worked around or
> warped if the intent to do so is there.

Yes.

The rough consensus rule of PC decision-making, in effect a
supermajority requirement, will inevitably lead to deadlocks and "game
of chicken" situations when opinions are polarized and passionate,
and there's no obvious "nuclear option" to break such deadlocks.

That being the case it will be up to the negotiating skills of the
participants and chair, ability to manage interpersonal conflicts and
"personal chemistry" issues and get past them to get decisions made.
And sometimes that can be really hard.

> You can also send the results of any process to the EC for confirmation,
> as they are oversight for the PC and the  NCSG charter allows for the
> membership to challenge any EC decision. We have a set of accountability
> mechanisms that should be used before jumping into process design.

That is a very good point.

> Having said that, I wish you all the best in developing a process that
> cannot be thwarted by ill will and mistrust.

While that is obviously impossible, some processes are more robust
than others, and we might be able to come up with some partial
solutions that would make decision-making easier in the future.

But I don't think we should try to come up with a radically new
process that would solve everything.

On Fri, Apr 07, 2017 at 12:58:32PM +0900, Rafik Dammak (rafik.dammak at gmail.com) wrote:

> I cannot accept to be appointed to SSC due to the circumstances and I am
> more than keen to withdraw my candidature and restart the process

At this point it is indeed clear we must do that.

But there's no rush:

On Fri, Apr 07, 2017 at 12:32:46AM -0400, avri doria (avri at acm.org) wrote:

> I might add that I see no problem with continuing for a while with just
> 2 members in the SSC.  That is one of the advantages of the SSC
> requiring full consensus.

Yes. The only (trivial) problem is that it's a bit embarrassing
that after we insisted on having three slots we can't fill them all.
But I guess people are already used to NCSG behaving... oddly at times.

On Fri, Apr 07, 2017 at 09:06:52AM +0200, William Drake (wjdrake at gmail.com) wrote:

> I’d let the SSC get on with its business with the two solid reps
> you’ve chosen. If people feel the universe absolutely requires us to
> have three, I'd give it a good rest and focus on other work to
> rebuild normality before trying.

Agreed.

> IMO the only significant procedural flaw concerned transparency.

Yes. And that is also one thing we can and should be able to agree
about before trying again.

I note in passing that the recordings of the PC subgroup debating
this have not been published. They might help us understand what
went wrong.

> As for all the hyper-heated verbiage I’ve read in the past couple
> days, wow, yikes, holy cow, etc.

Agreed on that, too. :-)

> Good luck to us all,

Indeed.

-- 
Tapani Tarvainen