I think you make fair points, Lovecraft, and to be clear, I put together a case for auctions, yes, in January at the height of some appalling cheating, because I was despondent that the cheating could ever be stopped or rules enforced... but as you make clear, there are obvious arguments not to proceed with it too.
I’m trying not to be an advocate or an opponent. I think I need to show respect and sincerely try to listen. To be honest, there are arguments I think are quite complicated and need to be detailed, studied, and reflected on. When there was no prospect of me being anyone except myself, I think I had a freedom to fire off my own ideas willy-nilly. But moving towards a representative role, my position becomes more compromised by a duty not to be partisan, and I take that responsibility seriously, to listen more and really try to see what everyone has to say, not just what I have to say.
At least here at Acorn, I think I am in a prime position to do that. I’ve had a chance to weigh people up, to do business with people, to follow debates. And also, doing business with many people here, and experiencing much goodwill and decency (even gifts of domain names), I am able to *feel* what this crisis means for people, at a time as Murray has already pointed out, of national crisis. It's made me think deeper.
The name-dropping crisis is not going away. We've got to be realistic about that, and I know you are. Nominet are bringing it to a head. It's been accentuated by the big registrars circumventing convention and mass-registering millions of domains. That achieved almost nothing. But the feeding frenzy that followed, when Namesco's huge number of domains dropped in January, led to what has been correctly identified as a tactical 'arms race', and frankly a meltdown of the system, and failure to enforce rules. It's a classic kind of domain world situation. Laissez-faire and leave large registrars to police their own actions. In my view they needed policing.
The question is, what are people going to advocate to Nominet, and will that change their decision-making? Obviously I get that many will be cynical about that. My job, as I see it, is to try to be more genuinely non-partisan here, and to listen more than to advocate, and assuming (ambitiously) that I'll be inside that organisation in 2 months time, and party to what happens in what unfolds... to call out bad practice every single time I see it. I already have. My extended presentation frankly eviscerates some Nominet policy, and I don't intend to stop or 'go native' once I'm inside. There will already be people who give me a frosty reception because I've called out their poor judgment, and that's how it's going to be.
My pride is my nursing and my family, and I'm a complete outsider. I aim to stay that way, and I'll be applying forensic scrutiny to every single decision that Nominet makes. You know and I know that if that narrative happens then my individual influence is likely to be marginal. But I will be there to ask awkward questions, to see, and to record. I want people to know that they will be accountable, and that's what's needed with the dropping systems too. Rules have to be enforced (and they need re-writing), and anyone who wants access to UK domains must be held to account for themselves, their business associations, their shared platforms, and the use those are put to. If a system can be built that reins things in, as you say 'to make things harder' then that's fine with me. It doesn't have to be the auction model, but it does need to be a model that is orderly, rules-based, and resistant to cheating.
26 days to go...
