Palfrey: Public Participation in ICANN: A Preliminary Study
This misses on two key points - first, the internet is not the be all and end all as a vehicle for public participation. Second, it assumes that public input (which I presume is meant as "input coming from users of the DNS") into the process should somehow carry more weight than other inputs into the process. The internet is users, but it is also about connections between those users. ICANN is simply a mechanism to determine and implement the rules by which those interconnections can and can't be made. Everyone needs to have input to these decisions, but not at the expense of others. Mailing lists in which fictitious poseurs banter with one another is simply a bad mechanism to gather these voices in a coherent manner. The general assembly and public forum portions of the ICANN meetings, on the other hand, are particularly good ways to gather these voices.
I'm not really sure what John is on about unless he's chasing down some vague point regarding the tragedy of the commons.