authoritarian conditions (e.g. Full identification of all participants, and of their political tendencies and affilliations ) in ImcRogue, and
suggestion that the NewImcHowTo process has strict requirements that Substantial material results must be demonstrated, in terms of both recruitment and diversity
The word must implies an authoritarian relation between the network and the new collective, which seriously misrepresents both the theory and the practice of the network. For example, as of May 2003, the PrinciplesOfUnity and MembershipCriteria are still, formally speaking, draft criteria. They are more or less accepted in practice because people find them more or less reasonable.
NewImc030415a - ten days after the deadline for ImcRogue recognition on imc-process, arc claims that ImcIthaca blocks ImcRogue recognition, saying that the Ithaca liaison will explain.
In formal consensus, http://www.consensus.net/flowchart.html, there is a chronological (time) separation between identifying concerns and resolving concerns. If people are able to raise new concerns during a period of resolving concerns, then there is a good chance that the process never terminates, so there is already a process risk here.
A block in new-imc and imc-process is very rare in practice. Usually it is enough to express a concern and trust the new-imc helper to suspend or delay a deadline.
A block should be very clear to understand, it should be clear that it's for fundamental reasons - this block is not clear, it's only a claim about a block...
NewImc030421a - the Ithaca liaison, la, reveals that ImcIthaca has severe internal problems, I find it difficult to want to raise my own concerns about our IMC and whether or not it should be dictating it's views and interpretations to other IMCs .
So it sounds like there is no block from ImcIthaca.
NewImc030422a - arc makes a personal block, seventeen days after the deadline, without realising that a block has to be for a fundamental reason, and hence should be very clear. He says he is backing up some of [andy]'s concerns and that the issue of consensus vs 2/3rds needs to be addressed . Resolving a concern (or block) which is not clear is difficult, for the obvious reason that you can't solve a problem when the problem is not defined or understood!
It eventually seemed that arc's reason for a block is that he feels that full consensus should be mandatory for all new IMCs. While it is true that many people feel strongly in favour of full consensus, the PrinciplesOfUnity and the MembershipCriteria are only draft criteria. Moreover, while they clearly state a preference for a decision-making procedure similar to consensus, the wording is not strict. So the blocks were not made for a fundamental reason. This is why some people feel that arc has been obstructionist in the new IMC process.
ImcProcess030421a eric blocks approval of ImcRogue (see also NewImcRogueProcess) for the reason that ImcRogue chose not to have a "pure" consensus method of decision-making, i.e. it chose to retain the possibility of a 2/3 supermajority vote as a last resort in case consensus fails. It is ironical that someone from a dysfunctioning local IMC, ImcIthaca, which claims to use pure consensus, can try to impose pure consensus on a newly formed IMC, rather than being satisfied to have stimulated serious discussion in the new group, and then to trust the new group to autonomously decide what decision-making method, "aligned with consensus", it wishes to use.
Taken literally, this email claims a second reason, "new imc process", for blocking ImcRogue: The block of ithacaimc is only until the two issues of concensus and following the new imc process have been met. The problem with this is its vagueness - a general reference to new imc process without any concrete information is difficult to deal with - it's too fuzzy.
NewImc030524a eric posts a clearly off-topic email to the new-imc mailing list, which risks starting global process discussions on new-imc. The new-imc working group has no mandate from the network to decide on global process, and any experienced Indymedia person has no excuse for not knowing this. Ironically, this obstructionist email claims to be about... dealing with obstructionism, but the only concrete proposal it makes is about creating something like a neutral judicial panel - and this is clearly something that way beyond new-imc, and ideally it should be worked on bottom-up, starting from (at least) a regional level list, like http://lists.indymedia.org/mailman/listinfo/imc-us-process .
people felt by some to be obstructing other global working groups
