Discuss mailing list

[Philipp Schafft <lion AT lion.leolix.org>]

Good morning,

On Tue, 2017-07-25 at 22:24 -0600, Jeff Taylor wrote:
> As mentioned, we need to start a discussion of any policy changes 
> regarding TLD proposals.

I very much support this. I also think it is important that the new
policy will be binding. E.g. a vote must be canceled in my opinion if it
fails to adhere to the policy for any reason (this is as none of the
parts of the policy should be considered more important). It should also
be made clear what is a part of the policy and what are additional
recommendations and/or comments to it.


> To start off the discussion, I thought I'd 
> link to some items I threw together earlier this year, with some 
> additional items and clarifications by Fusl.  The mirror for the old 
> wiki page is here (note do NOT try to login, it will only confuse the 
> mirror)... 
> http://sourpuss.net/mirror/wiki.opennicproject.org/TLDPolicyProposed
> 
> For comparison, the current rules can be found here: 
> https://wiki.opennic.org/opennic:creating_new_tlds

Sadly I'm offline at the moment of this writing so I can not look them
up. Will have a look later on and may or may not write another response
to this.


> Many of these items revolve around the voting process itself,

I would suggest to split at this point: Make a policy for creation of
TLDs and one for votes in general. There are more things to vote about.
I think a uniform way of voting would be helpful.

> [...]


> We should also consider making some rule changes apply to existing 
> TLDs.  For example, the requirement for an opennic.[TLD] web page under 
> each TLD would be very beneficial to visitors and active members alike.

While I like this, there are two problems I see:
      * Existing TLDs run based on what the community agreed on when it
        was created. Changing may collide with those agreements. There
        needs to be a process here. This naturally depends on the exact
        changes. e.g. enforcing opennic.$TLD, example.$TLD,
        localhost.$TLD would be much easier to get in than altering
        terms of usage. Also: this escalates down to the actual users as
        the rules under wich they registered domains will likely change.
      * This can not be binding for peered TLDs. I would suggest to make
        the changes reflect this. However I think that some aspects
        could be implemented as recommends. e.g. opennic.$TLD should be
        reserved for OpenNIC's use.

 
> Similarly, it may be a good idea to pool together some ideas under an 
> umbrella clause that would automatically apply to ALL opennic domain,

'automatically' is something that is very problematic for the reasons
above. I would suggest to have such a document and TLD operators refer
to a given version of it. So in case this umbrella set of rules is
updated the operator can inform users and at some point switch to the
new revision.


> such as a rule against child pornography. While it's good to have an 
> open structure for everyone to enjoy, we really should have *some* 
> principles posted to show that we as a group have certain moral values 
> and are willing to draw a line against undesirable content.
charta
This is very problematic as of my understanding: who's moral standards
do you want to implement? Moral standards aren't related to hard facts,
they are a set of rules each and every group creates individually. I
often change between different groups with totally different standards.
I would like to give you some examples. Starting directly with your
example:
      * Different countries have different definitions of 'child' and
        'pornography'. Last time I checked wikipedia 'child' was defined
        between 12 and 30, depending on where in the world you are.
        'pornography' has the same problem. Some places in the world
        allow it if it's art, some forbid it in all ways, some just
        don't care, and some don't care as long as specific parts of the
        body aren't shown (which in some places of the world caused a
        wave of body modifications).
      * In some places of the world it is perfectly find to hit your
        wife, but not to drink alcohol.
      * In some social groups I participate hugging is strictly for
        men-and-wife-after-the-dark and in some it's expected greeting.

As moral standards are bound to culture only, not facts, there is no
right or wrong. There is also no 'basic standards accepted by everyone'.
That is just an illusion created by the fact that most of us keep to be
all their life in the same social group. I feel like this will fail the
same way as each and every discussion on how to forbid commercial use of
domains we had on this list failed in some way.


I hope this mail is of positive input to you and our valued readers.

With best regards,

-- 
Philipp Schafft,
erster Vorsitzender des Fellig e.V.
chairman of Fellig e.V.