On Jul 5, 2009, at 1:15 AM, William Drake wrote:
Hi Robin,
Nice site, thanks for putting it together, I didn't realize we were doing this. Three quick questions:
1. What's the envisioned relationship between this and what you call the "legacy" site at
http://ncuc.syr.edu?
We are phasing out the "legacy" site and migrating everything to the Ning platform - which will make it much easier for us to work collaboratively and share information efficiently and participate in numerous conversations at once.
Yes and yes.
In which case I assume we'd want to configure things so one doesn't have to be a member and log in to see list of members and other information, as now?
The Ning site is being configured so anyone can see who the NCUC members are, but not their personal information.
Or are you thinking we'd keep the syr site for general public info and just use this one for our internal coordination?
The Ning site is both for internal collaboration and for the general public. We can add pages to the Ning site that can be viewed by anyone in the public, or can remain visible to only those within the constituency.
2. Assuming the GNSO restructuring happens within the next few months, my understanding has been that NCUC per se goes away and its members will hopefully launch more specialized constituencies. If so, then the new site would seem to have a rather short shelf life, which could raise questions about the utility of putting in a lot time building it. Or would we then migrate the new material into the NCSG site?
The members in NCUC should "spin out" into various new constituencies (for example a "free expression constituency" or a "techie-academic constituency") depending upon one's interest. It doesn't make sense to keep NCUC going in the long-term and also NCSG - they are both "noncommercial users" broadly defined. So NCUC members should think about how they would like to organize in the coming months.
It should not be too difficult to re-name the site NCSG should that be the appropriate approach so I wouldn't let the pending migration issue keep us from building any longer. Waiting for this transition to happen to build infrastructure is getting us killed because ICANN/IPR crowd says we aren't doing anything and don't deserve support/council seats, so it is a chicken and egg problem. We just have to build it.
3. Which raises a broader question I've never thought about...what happens with SG sites once they're born? While in practical terms current NCUC members will constitute the lion's share of the SG in the near-term, alongside perhaps a cyber-censorship constituency, in formal terms we are not the SG. So who will build and manage the NCSG site? Is the expectation that once constituencies are formed, SG elections are held, and governance arrangements established the new groupings will each launch new sites wherever they want to be managed as they want? Or is ICANN expecting to have some sort of hand in this...?
I don't think anyone in the GNSO has thought all of these questions through and I certainly can't speak for the GNSO in saying how it will all unfold. These are very good questions for the various working groups who have been tasked with working through these details of the transition. Noncommercial users should expect to play a primary role in the management of their site and will probably have to remind ICANN staff of that. Let me see what I can find out before speculating here.