BTW: Who will take care of the domains now Brad resigns?

David Gerard wrote: In the past Jimbo was the "designated agent" for domain names in terms of who was listed as the primary administrative contact. Brion is clearly the "technical contact", and he is the one that deals with the server side in terms of which IP addresses and other issues about the domains and sub-domains are concerned, but in terms of being legally responsible for paying the bills and making sure the legal aspects of keeping and maintaining the domain names (and fighting off challenges to those who might claim the domains through legal action), that was clearly Brad's area of expertise. Currently "wikipedia.org" lists Brad as both the administrative contact as well as the technical contact. See http://who.godaddy.com/WhoIs.aspx?domain=wikipedia.org&prog_id=godaddy for some details. Once a replacement for Brad happens, this is something that should be dealt with. I think Brion ought to be listed as the technical contact, (mainly for situations like this), but that is something left to the WMF board to decide. The "real" person who owns the domain is the person listed as the administrative contact. In theory Brad could really screw over the foundation here if he wanted, even though I seriously doubt he is that kind of person to take advantage of this situation, not to mention it would ruin is reputation as an attorney. -- Robert Horning

Florence Devouard wrote: <*snip*> Considering that the announcement of Brad's resignation just occured, it shouldn't be surprising that this is one issue that has just come up. And while I am not questioning Brad's integrity here, I am pointing out that a less than honorable person could take advantage of the situation and move the domains to some other server farm and do all sorts of other damage. This is precisely why the "administrative contact" person should be somebody with absolutely stellar integrity and has the full faith and trust of not only the board but the entire community, and why I believe this to be a very valid question. While in the long run any such usurption of the WMF domains would eventually come back under the control of the WMF, it would be a very miserable several months if somebody were to mess things up in this way. Considering the way vandals try to mess up our projects, this would be the ultimate vandalism ploy if this domain registration was messed up. It could be far more damaging than a rogue admin or even steward. I have no doubt that at the moment the WMF has this issue under control, and that certainly any formalities that would also involve Brad would be done as a matter of courtesy as well. -- Robert Horning.

Robert Horning wrote: Whilst I have no worry at all about Brad integrity on this, my concern was rather that for privacy reasons, I felt not confortable with us having to read Brad mails to be able to follow up, in particular automated systems such as registrations of domain names or trademarks. It feels best to sometimes use generic email addresses, so that any employee can follow up, and the address can be easily redirected to another employee in case of cease of activity, holidays, illness, or whatever. This is also the interest of using a press at wikimedia.org rather than sandy email. Better scaling and no pit when the person is not available. ant