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[Jeff Taylor <shdwdrgn AT sourpuss.net>]

    In the 15 years I have been with opennic I have never once proposed
    a new TLD -- and yet now I manage nine of them.  Every one of these
    TLDs were brought in by people who left opennic or didn't have the
    resources or time to keep running the zones.  It happens, nobody can
    plan for every outcome and real life gets in the way sometimes.
    
    As Jonah says, we want the people proposing new TLDs to show some
    commitment to opennic and participate for some time before we feel
    comfortable giving them the responsibility of managing a TLD, but at
    the same time I think it's also important to remember that there are
    already plenty of folks here willing to pick up an abandoned TLD if
    there is actually some interest in preserving it.  That should also
    be a consideration when voting on new TLDs -- if there is a lot of
    community interest in a particular idea then that should be weighed
    along with the perceived experience of the person proposing the
    idea.  Even if we need to put an idea on the back burner for awhile
    and let it mature, good ideas should not be thrown away.
    
    Not that I'm saying I'm in favor of any of the recent ideas being
    thrown out, I'm just trying to say that even if someone fails as a
    TLD operator we can still carry forward an idea with other people
    sharing control.  A TLD registrar doesn't need to be a one-person
    operation, and maybe we should take another look at our current
    policies and think about why we are set up to essentially force each
    TLD to be a stand-alone entity.