Discuss mailing list

[<vv AT cgs.pw>]

You've missed the results of the last few times
that has been discussed. There are people here
who make it quite clear that a mailing list is
all they will accept and they will leave if we
change that.

A forum needs to be maintained, which is a problem,
I will be overrun with spam in a few days otherwise.
Personally I prefer and appreciate the benefits of
a forum, but the general consensus is different here.
Also, the proposal and consequent test site, for
a system that does a parallel forum and mailing list
where users can chose one or both and not miss anything
has recently failed miserably. I will also point out
that we have a perfectly good forum that was set up
the last time forums were discussed. I put a lot of
effort into it at the beginning but many members
boycott it. It's just not going to fly.

Sorry about the reality check. :)

Regards,
        Ole


re new here. That discussion comes up frequently
and you apparently have missed

On Sun, 31 Dec 2017 19:55:56 -0500
gitgud AT tfwno.gf wrote:

> 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.
> >> 
> >> --------
> >> You are a member of the OpenNIC Discuss list.
> >> You may unsubscribe by emailing
> >> discuss-unsubscribe AT lists.opennicproject.org  
> > 
> > --
> > 
> > Rouben
> > 
> > Links:
> > ------
> > [1] http://simplyvoting.com
> > 
> > 
> > --------
> > You are a member of the OpenNIC Discuss list.
> > You may unsubscribe by emailing 
> > discuss-unsubscribe AT lists.opennicproject.org