Karl Auerbach (who doesn't seem to believe in trackback) responds to yesterday's notes on representativity, and tries to figure out what I meant.
I guess I should clarify: When I talk about "non-achievable representativity goals", then I mean the kind of representativity that a government can claim in a well-functioning democracy. The 2000 at-large elections clearly didn't reach that level of representativity -- but they still were good enough for the purpose of selecting directors. Likewise, the structure to be set up behind the ALAC will never reach that level of representativity -- but it may still be good enough to select new ALAC members, and for the purpose of channeling arguments into ICANN.
Here's the other key point: Don't try to give additional weight to your arguments by claiming that you're "representative" when it's easy for your opponents to come up with a standard for representativity that you can't reach, so they can discuss your representativity instead of the merits of your argument. Kathy Kleiman learned that lesson the ugly way in Shanghai; I'm sure Karl still remembers.
In other words, demanding high standards of representativity from those whose task it is to raise certain interests or arguments is a way to limit participation in ICANN to the small group of suppliers (think about the gTLD registry constituency's small, but complete membership), and to governments (who claim to be representative by definition).
