No disrespect intended, but whoever thought and fantasied that demi-gods could govern the Internet and Internet-mediated reality were the original sinners :)

I am happy there were and are no demi gods for domain names or anything subsequent ... The current 'we the good and responsible people' based institutions around Internet/ digital are bad enough. I wonder if these are inheritors of the 'demi-god' thinking, or at least justify themselves upon it .. What with multi-stakeholderists, the insane belief in the demi-god-ness of the start-up whizkids -- in developing countries they wish to and are often allowed to run IT ministries, and so on.  I much prefer democracy of perfectly ordinary people, and leaders that believe in democracy of perfectly ordinary people. ..

(Yes, good and capable people do matter everywhere, and they matter a lot. But right institutions may matter more.)

parminder

Dear Barry,

oh what a great trip into memory lane! Thank you! One thing you did not mention, though, is that back then there were Usenet demi-gods who used to be able to keep the whole thing sane and together. When these retired/moved on, Usenet started declining. I don't think there are net demi-gods in domain names, are there?
Kindest regards,

Olivier

On 02/01/2022 07:31, Barry Shein via At-Large wrote:

Re: TLDs and communities

From: Evan Leibovitch via At-Large <at-large@atlarge-lists.icann.org>

I witnessed first hand the hopelessness and futility of those who believed
that a TLD could define, sustain or create a community.

Back in the days of Usenet, the 1980s mostly, which had millions of
users and eventually over 100,000 discussion topics the issue of when
to add a new topic was a constant, lively issue.

  https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Usenet

Discussion groups were "tree" organized so you had rec for recreation,
rec.sports, rec.sports.baseball, etc.

For a while there were only eight top level topics (rec, comp
[computer], talk, sci, ...), plus many regional (ne for new england,
uk, and so on), and quite a few informal, unblessed top level topics
such as "alt" which existed outside the mainstream governance.

(Note: There was earlier history, net.*, but it adds nothing to this.)

It should sound a little familiar.

How were new topics created?

By an open discussion and vote on certain designated administrative
discussion groups. Other than that there really was no governance
structure.

  An important bit of wisdom gained was that you could not create
  interest in a topic by creating a group for it.

The most compelling reason to create a new group was to split off
discussion traffic which was overwhelming another, more general group.

So rec.sports.baseball might sprout rec.sports.baseball.worldseries
because the former was being overwhelmed with world series discussion.

We knew from experience back then, the 1980s, that you could not
create interest or community by creating a topic category for it.

Attempts failed repeatedly until it became a governing principle.

You (dear reader) may find that unintuitive but that was what actual
experience taught us.

P.S. An expression that arose from Usenet was "Eternal September":

  https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eternal_September

In simple terms students, millions, arrived every September, got
access to Usenet, and began imagining what the rules for things like
newsgroup creation were or ought to be. Every year.

Then AOL added Usenet and it became "Eternal September", the academic
schedule no longer throttled the flood of new accounts.

Unfortunately some of these TLD discussions have that "Eternal
September" feel to them.

  "I don't want to hear YOUR opinion! I want to hear MY opinon coming
   out of YOUR mouth!" -- some wag

_______________________________________________
At-Large mailing list
At-Large@atlarge-lists.icann.org
https://atlarge-lists.icann.org/mailman/listinfo/at-large

At-Large Official Site: http://atlarge.icann.org
_______________________________________________
By submitting your personal data, you consent to the processing of your personal data for purposes of subscribing to this mailing list accordance with the ICANN Privacy Policy (https://www.icann.org/privacy/policy) and the website Terms of Service (https://www.icann.org/privacy/tos). You can visit the Mailman link above to change your membership status or configuration, including unsubscribing, setting digest-style delivery or disabling delivery altogether (e.g., for a vacation), and so on.