On April 9 ICANN's so-called "At Large Advisory Committee" (ALAC) put out a paper entitled "Proposed Criteria and Accreditation Process for At-Large Structures, and Proposed Guidelines for Regional At-Large Organizations' (RALOs) Memorandum of Understanding (MOU) with ICANN".
That paper called for comments to be submitted to a "forum".
As of this date (April 23), which happens to be the closing date for comments, that "forum" has not been made visible to the public.
The word "forum" invokes an image of a place where people gather and exchange ideas. However the ALAC's failure to make the comments visible denies people the ability to exchange ideas and to build new ideas and compromises based on that exchange.
ICANN's history has rarely, if ever, allowed there to be a real marketplace of ideas - ICANN generally operates by allowing people to throw comments over a wall to silently meet their fate at the hands of unknown persons using unknown criteria.
It is sad that ICANN's ALAC has followed the same path.
Posted by karl at April 23, 2003 1:42 AM