North American Network Operators Group

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Re: ARIN, was Re: 72/8 friendly reminder

  • From: Michael.Dillon
  • Date: Thu Mar 24 11:34:52 2005

> The other consequence is that the membership takes on the 
> responsibility for ARIN's actions.  Not the staff's actions, but 
> ARIN's actions.  If there is any dysfunction in ARIN, I suspect that 
> it lay here.

Yes, this is what I believe. The ARIN membership is more
passive than I think is healthy for the organization. 
Thus, the organization is dysfunctional.

> I want to make it clear that any lack of change or innovation is not 
> something that the staff has caused.

I'm not knocking the staff. And I'm also not suggesting
that people should pester the staff if they want ARIN to
act on something. The Board of Trustees is responsible for
instructing the staff to act, and therefore, ARIN members
and others should either communicate directly with the 
Trustees, or through the public policy process. However,
this public policy process is itself suffering as the
result of extremely low involvement by ARIN members and
by other interested parties.

> But, the point is taken that ARIN would be much more "useful" to the 
> Internet if there was a change in participation.

Point taken. My goal is to see more participation so that
more diverse viewpoints are involved in the discussion.
When there are only a handful of people making all the
decisions, then it is much easier to make mistakes,
to misunderstand the situation, and to be blind to 
possibilities. Democractic oversight and review cannot
happen when the number of people involved is very low.

>  But a lot of times people confuse the ARIN staff 
> with the ARIN membership organization.

That's why I didn't mention the staff and repeatedly
pointed the finger at the apathy of the IP network
operators who form ARIN's membership.

--Michael Dillon