[discuss] Possible approaches to solving "problem no. 1"

Thu Feb 20 20:21:31 UTC 2014

On Thu, Feb 20, 2014 at 08:11:33PM +0000, Milton L Mueller wrote:
> This seems like a really bad idea from a very smart guy. The idea of N registries voting on resource record changes requested by and only affecting a single registry flies in the face of everything we know about how to efficiently coordinate social systems. 

It was more subtle than that in the version I saw.  N of M could vote
to approve right away, but if nobody did anything the timer continued
to tick and the default was "approve".  I think the idea is to
leverage community review to move data changes along faster, and to
raise flags if there's an issue, in an effort to increase robustness
while yet going faster.

None of that is to say that I understand why this is even a problem
we think we ought to solve.  When I worked for a registry operator,
the process for ccTLD changes was slow and bureaucratic just until
ICANN automated most of it, after which it seemed to work without
really much ceremony at all.  It is entirely possible that we are
trying to solve a problem that was already solved some time ago.

The irritant in theory of the NTIA "approving" other countries'
registries' changes is a different and only tangentially related
problem.

Best regards,

A

-- 
Andrew Sullivan
ajs at anvilwalrusden.com