Hi Andrew, I understand your point. However although we think we know what diversity means, in reality the meaning of diversity is far more complex - especially in the context of this group. I'm challenging the notion that diversity means race/gender/and sexual orientation. And there's religion which is the other invidious class - odd no one mentioned religion. btw - my deity can kick you deity's ass. I think my definitions of diversity are more relevant than the traditional one in this context. On 1/31/2013 10:50 PM, Andrew A. Adams wrote: > Marc, > > You seem to have missed the context of the discussion of diversity. It > arose > because of discussions of the GNSO endorsements of candidates for the > ATRT2 > team. While Avri, Dan, myself and others have engaged in a general > discussion > of diversity, the issue I was posting on and that the others taking this > question seriously seemed to me to be posting on, is the question of > required > diversity in bodies with specific authority or whose outputs are > likely to be > used to strongly and formally influence piolicy-making. Voluntary > membership > organisations such as NCUC/NCSG may also form an echo-chamber and > self-aware > people interested in equality, justice and fairness may seek to put some > resources into outreach to disproportionately encourage new members from > under-represented groups. > > Your discussion about intelligence levels, US political leanings and US > sports teams are rather off-the-point and in fact represent a classic > misdirection argument about any form of attempting to improve > diversity of > representation. > > If you haven't already seen it, I heartily recommend John Scalzi's > post on > "Straight White Male: The Lowest Difficulty Setting There Is": > > http://tinyurl.com/cngqk4h > > On this list we have good gender balance, some reasonable > representation from > developing countries and some other geographic diversity (though I > think the > only Japan-based members of the list are immigrant SWMs from the UK or > US, > but I might be mis-remembering, and I don't recall seeing any > Korean-based > posters - FYI Korea and Japan have some of the highest Internet > penetration > rates in the world, but are very unengaged in Internet governance > fora). But > we're just one constituency in ICANN and many of the others seem far less > diverse and even with our diversity, it would be easy for the formal > bodies > of ICANN to end up unrepresentative, and therefore producing poorer > policies. > > Forgive me for being concerned about such issues, but as an information > ethicist, looking at the mechanisms creating and perpetuating > inequality in > information services is one of my research interests. > > >