ICANN/DNSO

Year 1999 lessons from the DNSO Secretariat experience.
Management of an open majordomo list (ga@dnso.org).

Naives assumptions:

1. The purposes of the DNSO General Assembly are clear, in the spirit of the ICANN process the list shall be open.

2. The simple and short list's rules will be easy to understand in the international forum.

3. The international forum will make everybody extremelly cautious about different cultures and therefore any argument will strictly focus on the DNSO subjects, and nobody wouldn't ever humiliate oneself and degrade oneself to target persons for being women, for race, for religion. Last not the least, the English being working language and as such an enormous advantage to native English speakers, in any circumstances the used words will not go beyond the classics, and particularily any slang, including vulgare and obscene, will be avoided.

Reality shock:

1. The assuption that everybody understands what is a civil society is wrong.

2. You will be facing the permanent bad faith of those who consider that "what is not explicitly forbidden is authorised", with the subsequent irrealistic request (if not demand) to define a priori what is forbidden in the human endless imagination.

   The good exemple coming to mind is an old fact about an US customer who bought a micro-wave oven and used it to dry a wet cat, then after the cat's death filled a lawsuit against micro-oven manufacturer that "drying a cat" was not explicitely forbidden in the explanation notice.

3. Some native English speakers consider every discussion about Internet matters as a battle against any other culture, they will trample on everything, arrogant and nasty, offending many.

Wisdom:

1. You cannot have an ideal of openness without a balancing enforcement of civility and honesty.

2. Whereas in each and every country there is an enforcable law, the Internet is international and the Internet law still to be defined.

3. The Internet global village is still a place capable to improve human relations and common understanding. The uttmost reward is here.

Practical actions and decisions:

1. Majordomo software - subscribe policy

   The minimum is "open+confirm", which cause majordomo to send a reply back to the subscriber which includes a authentication number which must be sent back in with another subscribe command.

   The better is "closed" or manual approvals. It slow down the possibility of hostile members to add fake characters and snow the list with a number of nonsense messages. The cost increases and shall be published.

2. Majordomo software - who access

   Set to closed. The subscribe policy "open+confirm" will not prevent to have spammers and spoofers subscribing. Then if the "who access" is open, the disaster is immediate - all members will be in danger of being abused by spamming and spoofing.

3. Majordomo software - list of publicly-available mailing lists

   Do not advertise your list.

4. List membership and fake characters

   The proof of identity on the global Internet is impossible. The overabundance of websites offering free e-mails addresses on the click leads sometimes to the proliferation of fake characters subscribing to open lists. One proliferic person with many e-mail addresses may play an endless theater game. Two or more that persons destroy the list, or completely occupy the forum with their ideas and comments -- one exemple of "denial of service".

   Some archives are worth of being visited to understand who's who:

   • domain-policy@lists.internic.net http://lists.internic.net/archives/index.html
   • list@ifwp.org http://lists.ifwp.org/archive/

   The dnso.org archives provide some guidance too:

   • http://www.dnso.org/clubpublic/ga/Arc02/msg00406.html
   • http://www.dnso.org/clubpublic/ga/Arc02/msg00448.html
   • http://www.dnso.org/clubpublic/ga/Arc02/msg00600.html
   • http://www.dnso.org/clubpublic/ga/Arc02/msg00611.html

5. List policy enforcement and democratic, "open and transparent" process

   Never reward an arrogant and nasty to the detriment of a civil society, never surrender to a demagogy. Do not feel guilty to filter abusers. The abusers will scream about censorship, they may question political powers, governments and civil right institutions. They may write to medias. The probability is high that in some circumstances (political elections, economical war, cupidity), even the people with a high integrity will get abused, not to mention that for some careerists this demagogy may be helpfull to gain popularity. The probability is high, that there will be always newcomers believing they will understand better, and have capacity to deal with abusers -- it is the essence of humanity. The "open and transparent" shall not be interpreted the way that anyone can say anything about anyone or any thing, on topic or not, true or not, obscene or not, and that any restrictions on doing so is "censorship" and "closed process". Permitting these interpretations is equivalent to turning the both the asylum and the city over to the lunatics or to the destructive terrorists and that we just can't do that and have a civil society, reasoned discussions, or anything else.

6. List management - remain stoic

   Most of abusers dream about taking all your time to argue with them. Most of abusers wish to be known, quoted, have their contributions archived. Ignoring them makes them nervous but is the best solution.

7. List management - publish periodical information

   The cost of managing mailing list includes the inherent part -- users's problems, network's problems, software bugs, maintainance -- as well as preserving a discussion forum from abuses or destruction. Indicate the cost related to preservation of working conditions on the mailing forum. Whereas this will be of no results on abusers (or mostly an opposite effect), the global understanding will be improved, and less people will remain neutral towards them.

8. List management - keep and preserve all logs and backup them.

   Lawyers need it, the Internet law is still to be developped. You need it to make evidence of your work.