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ALAC/At-Large Mailing Lists

ALAC/At-Large currently have two mailing lists:

1. "ALAC" is a publicly subscribable open list (with the potential for moderation in extreme situations)
2. "ALAC-Internal" is a private list, archived but not publicly viewable, that is currently used for virtually all ALAC business.

Proposal

The ALAC will primarily use one mailing list for its business, and this list should be publicly viewable via the ICANN web site. To the extent that it is required there should be a second non-public list with the same subscription list for confidential issues.

The use of the second list should be limited to discussions that need to be confidential, personnel issues, purely social discussions, and perhaps travel-related threads. In the absence of this list, ALAC would have to resort to unarchived private messages to all addressees and there is little to be gained from that.

General guidelines for use of the second list should be published.

There has been a new proposal of having a public, Announce-only, publicly subscribable list

Discussion

It is understood, that there will be cases where a some committee members will feel truly uncomfortable making a particular statement in an openly archived forum. We do need to be sensitive to cultural differences, and it is better to hear their views privately than not at all. But such use should be limited to the extent possible. To the extent that such usage proliferates, other committee members should guide the discussion back to the public list, but should not violate the confidentiality of posts already made (which would defeat the list's purpose).

At one meeting, it was noted that some people are very uncomfortable with having virtually all of our exchanges public. I see no way of being an reasonably open body and at the same time supporting this position. It should be noted in our dealings with RALOs and the NomCom that ALAC members would be operating in a reasonably public environment.

Naming

I propose that the current ALAC list - "ALAC-INTERNAL" stay as is and be the "confidential" list.

The ideal name for the "open" ALAC list would be "ALAC@atlarge-lists.icann.org", but that is already taken for our At-Large list. We could rename that list to "AT-LARGE" and use "ALAC" for our publicly accessible committee list. If such disruption is not acceptable, we could name the new publicly-readable list "COMMITTEE@atlarge-lists.icann.org".

I propose that if we have an announce only list, it be named ALAC-ANNOUNCE

Mailing List Moderation

Discussion of current moderation issues, and if needed, proposed changes

<Cheryl>