Discuss mailing list

[gitgud AT tfwno.gf]

It may be time to part with direct democracy. While I agree that
decision making must be transparent, I don't necessarily think that an
open referendum on all issues is conducive to meaningful progress on all
fronts.

Meanwhile, as other users have already noted, the democracy here only
really exists with the consent of T1 operators. A council of the 
interests
there, while now no longer as open as before, may be more representative
of organizational opinion among senior contributors. While public 
comment
remains an excellent way to gauge popular opinion, it may be more 
beneficial
to establish a council based on merit or popular vote.

In the opposite direction, OpenNIC can be reorganized into a 
confederation
and already extant organizations given greater liberties to establish
new namespaces and conduct affairs autonomously. It would be up to each 
T1
operator how they govern their organization; "OpenNIC" at this stage
would only exist to mediate between fully independent organizations and
to resolve naming conflicts.

On 2017-12-31 19:44, Matthias Merkel wrote:
> I think it is a good reason to use a proper system however we may want
> to use something free. Strawpoll might even work fine. 200$ could
> prevent poor people from proposing TLDs while favouring companies and
> rich people which can easily afford it.
>
> On Mon, Jan 1, 2018, 1:37 AM Rouben <rouben AT rouben.net> 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
> >
> > --------
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>
> --
>
> Matthias Merkel
> CTO
> BoltN Hosting Limited
> https://boltn-hosting.com
> Company registration number 11081979
>
> Links:
> ------
> [1] http://simplyvoting.com
>
>
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