Discuss mailing list

[gitgud AT tfwno.gf]

As is probably obvious by now, with the vote for .front concluded, the 
resolution
to approve .front as a top level domain has failed. In a tally of 14 YES 
- 14 NO,
the motion has failed to achieve a simple majority of support in the 
mailing list.

There's a lot to get into, but to start, I will fully admit that I have 
been less
than stringent about the "official procedure" of this vote. As it 
stands, the voting
rules in place are nebulous, lack comprehensiveness, and leave a lot of 
responsibility
to the person who puts forward the proposal. This is nobody's fault, as 
not much has
actually come through the mailing list in a while, but is likely an 
oversight that will
need to be addressed in the future. If I took liberties during the 
proceedings,
it is because I found them necessary to take and the members of the 
community I talked
with were largely comfortable with me doing so.

There was a certain point in this vote when I asked one voter, Philipp 
Schafft, to clarify
an invalid vote he had cast during this vote. Philipp, a Tier One 
operator and key member of
the organization, used the opportunity to step onto a soap box and claim 
that his actions and
his right to them were a pillar of democratic values that must not be 
infringed, and that my
request that he "fix" his vote was an assault on these values. That 
everything I had done was
invalid and undemocratic, and that I had in some way violated the sacred 
"democracy" of OpenNIC.

On a vote as contentious as .front's has been, I wagered that Philipp 
would perhaps want the opportunity
to think and respond more critically on the vote than he had, especially 
with his considerable position
in the organization. In whatever misguided way I figured the decision 
validated the request, I was
trying to be polite and give him an opportunity he might have taken for 
granted earlier in the vote at
our proverbial round table.

OpenNIC is not a state, but an organization. Perhaps in a democracy that 
governs a nation and not
servers, Philipp would have a point about "freedom of speech", the 
importance of his ability
to cast an inane vote, and the required inflexibility of the rules in 
place. But this isn't a parliament
or a state house, but a mailing list for an alternative DNS. More 
importantly, this is an organization
where flexibility is not just the norm, but an outright sanity measure 
that makes working on this project
bearable.

Meanwhile, despite a lengthy comment period of over a months, few of the 
users that participated in
the vote ever commented or suggested amendment to the proposal, simply 
showing up to voice their
disapproval of this addition to the proposal. Some in the IRC had not 
even read the proposal,
and were under the impression that the proposal had nothing to do with 
its stated objective.
Admittedly, this is their right; still, I can't help but regard a lot of 
the opposition and
even a lot of the support as "arbitrary" since it was afforded scarce 
attention before the vote
began.

So with that vote chucked in the bin, the whole .front resolution fails 
to pass. I'm sure Philipp will
take issue with the fact that I included a vote cast shortly after the 
stated end of the ballot in the tally,
but to the credit of that person, his vote was an intelligible response 
and at this stage, the ultimate and
final result of the vote remains unchanged. After months of ramblings 
about unbreakable Malbolge encrypted
domain names, talk of establishing top level domains for trademarked 
video game brands, and a completely
stalled effort towards establishing or at least adopting a Certificate 
Authority, I had imagined that the
.front proposal backed by members of the already proven team 
administrating the .chan top level domain would
be a breath of fresh air.

I was wrong.

I don't know what I'll do from here. But I do know that I no longer have 
the enthusiasm I did for this project
or the hope that I will be able to accomplish anything meaningful as a 
member of it. I feel like I've wasted my
time and effort contributing to it, and that I've wasted the time of 
others in encouraging others to do the same.
It was a considerable endeavor undertaken by verax and Pathore to write 
and deploy an entirely new registration system
capable of supporting registration across multiple TLDs including .chan, 
and as of present, I do not feel confident that
their time was well spent.

That's it.