The draft report has now been uploaded to the
public comment page, and it is now possible for those not a part of the At-Large Review Working Party to submit comments until 24 March 2017. Unusually, a template has been provided to "aid" us in responding to the report. It is a lengthy PDF document with small boxes for the free input of text, so it doesn't make collaboration easy. I would suggest we disregard this tool, and prepare our response in the same fashion that we have done with other consultation activities, responding to those areas of the report which we feel are most applicable, and not just those where we have been asked to provide comments (though I would suggest we do this too). In this template, we are also asked to indicate our support for each of the recommendations by choosing an option from a dropdown menu. It is not clear to me how the results will be interpreted, or how much weight they will be given in the final report, but nonetheless, we might want to give some thought as to how we will do our own internal polling to gauge the views of our membership on each of these 16 recommendations.
-------- Original Message --------
Subject: At-Large Review - new draft report
Local Time: 1 February 2017 3:43 PM
UTC Time: 1 February 2017 15:43
The report will open for public comment today, and I think it is important we respond (and also read it closely to see whether or not there are any lessons we can learn, ahead of the GNSO Review). To aid us in drafting our comments, I am going to compare the changes in this second draft against those from the initial report released in December — before members of the At-Large Review Working Party requested signifiant revisions — and I'll try to produce a redlined version, which I'll share on our list. The initial draft was an honest assessment of At-Large. A cursory glance at the revisions in this new draft suggests the inclusion of flowery language praising the current leadership of At-Large for their stewardship of the community over time; I hope the original recommendations have not been materially toned down, but I haven't read the report close enough just yet to assess whether or not this is the case.
Best wishes,