Discuss mailing list

[gitgud AT tfwno.gf]

The best thing that could happen is if we abandoned the mailing list
completely. A forum could provide for better organization of threads,
improved accessibility, the ability to pin and prioritize important
conversations and announcements, and still provide a legacy interface
for email updates on conversations that are opt-in rather than the
baseline requirement of participating in governance decisions and
staying up to date on internal affairs.

On 2017-12-31 19:37, Rouben wrote:
> I’m afraid I cannot comment on most of the items gitgud mentioned,
> however, one thing I will agree on is the fact that mailing list
> voting can be problematic. Obviously, it has worked for years,
> however, it also has the potential to become contentious in certain
> situations as we’ve all seen.
>
> Therefore I want to float the following idea by the members of the
> list...
>
> 1. We get a proper online voting system. I mean a proper system, not
> something we can cobble together from existing code that does
> something similar... I mean a mature, supported system.
>
> 2. I am personally in favour of going with a commercial system for the
> following reasons:
>
> a) it will a third party system, not operated by any of our members,
> and will therefore be “impartial” vs. if it was operated by an
> OpenNIC member.
>
> b) a commercial system will most likely require some sort of payment.
> This financial obligation should be fronted by those calling the
> election as a sign of good faith that they are serious.
>
> I know of one we’d used at work for student council elections,
> called simplyvoting.com [1] that charge per election $200US per 250
> registered voters (how many members do we have?) There are countless
> others, I am just providing an example.
>
> I am sure you’d be able to think of counterpoints to this. One I can
> think of is that for some members, the voting system fees may not be
> affordable for whatever reason... e.g. for residents of some Eastern
> European countries $200 may be closer to one’s monthly salary and
> therefore be completely unaffordable. Since OpenNIC is open to
> everyone, this may be an obvious issue. Not sure how to solve it.
>
> 3. Finally, for the members that are more democratically purist, I
> want to highlight that online voting itself is imperfect, and there
> are good reasons why a lot of governments still use an old school
> paper ballot system. This video covers the challenges:
> https://youtu.be/w3_0x6oaDmI
> However, a dedicated, purpose built online voting system is surely
> better than a mailing list (i.e. no system at all).
>
> So I am curious on these 2 topics, in principle and in practice:
>
> 1. What do you think of a dedicated voting system?
>
> 2. How do you feel about going with a commercial, third-party operated
> system that the proposal initiators would need to (potentially) pay
> for, say, per election?
>
> Rouben
>
> On Sun, Dec 31, 2017 at 18:26 <gitgud AT tfwno.gf> wrote:
>
> > 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.
> >
> > --------
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>
> --
>
> Rouben
>
> Links:
> ------
> [1] http://simplyvoting.com
>
>
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