On Tue, Aug 23, 2016 at 02:51:55PM -0400, Ayden Férdeline wrote:
As for your interpretation of the data set, that this translates into millions of individuals being aware of WHOIS, that might be the case or it might not be. We need to consider the margin of error, the fact that some people will answer in the affirmative to any question in a poll, and a range of other variables. There is no doubt that some people are using WHOIS and are aware it is out there. All that is debatable is the volume of them.
I find it more than a little strange to invoke a study to prove a point when it supports one's own preferred conclusion, and then to question the same study's methodological assumptions and so on when the study is used as evidence in someone else's argument. But in any case, it seems to me there's a fallacy of relevance at work here, because "Internet users" and "domain name registrants" are clearly significantly different classes, and therefore may behave differently in the face of the same question. It doesn't seem to me that a survey of Internet users tells us anything at all about domain name registrants. Moreover, whether most people know about whois is also irrelevant. The question is whether the RDS is fit to the purposes people have for it, not whether most people are participants in that wanting. So I regard this quest for numbers of people who know about the whois as a distraction. It doesn't help us to make any decision, and it injects a false numeracy into the discussion ("These are the numbers we have, so we'll cite those.") Best regards, A -- Andrew Sullivan ajs@anvilwalrusden.com