[HN Gopher] Nominet (.uk) EGM result: four directors have been r...
       ___________________________________________________________________
        
       Nominet (.uk) EGM result: four directors have been removed from the
       board
        
       Author : blibble
       Score  : 43 points
       Date   : 2021-03-22 21:35 UTC (1 hours ago)
        
 (HTM) web link (www.nominet.uk)
 (TXT) w3m dump (www.nominet.uk)
        
       | mjw1007 wrote:
       | Some earlier discussion here:
       | https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26191570
        
       | blibble wrote:
       | (sorry it's not the page title but otherwise it's context-less)
       | 
       | more context:
       | https://www.theregister.com/2021/03/22/nominet_board_sacked/
       | 
       | and https://publicbenefit.uk/
        
       | M2Ys4U wrote:
       | I'm unnerved that the vote was so close, but it's undoubtedly the
       | right call. Thanks to all of the Nominet members who voted yes.
       | 
       | Hopefully the remaining board members will appoint the two
       | proposed interim directors and work can start on returning the
       | organisation to its true public benefit roots.
        
       | walrus01 wrote:
       | That's astonishing the amount of compensation the board thought
       | they could pay themselves. The technical and regulatory
       | complexity of running a domain registrar do not warrant
       | compensation of such absurd figures.
       | 
       | People who have 20 years of experience running core routers and
       | backbone operations at globe-spanning international transit and
       | transport ISPs that have thousands of POPs don't get paid
       | anywhere near that figure. The complexity of an ISP on the scale
       | of Telia, Level3 or NTT is far beyond a top level domain
       | operator.
       | 
       | "Those supporting the vote are also unhappy at compensation paid
       | to senior management. The website points to a 38 per cent drop in
       | operating profit between 2016 and 2020, while at the same time
       | the pay of the top three directors, who also sit on Nominet's
       | board, jumped 70 per cent, from PS1m to PS1.7m total. Last year,
       | Haworth received a 30 per cent pay rise, bringing his annual
       | compensation to PS593,000."
       | 
       | https://www.theregister.com/2021/01/31/nominet_board_vote/
        
         | hinkley wrote:
         | > Both points on the campaign website link to articles
         | published by The Register in which we outlined how Haworth had
         | theatrically shutdown the only means of independent
         | communication between members - an online forum - while he was
         | giving a speech at its annual general meeting, and how Haworth
         | had accused us of peddling "fake news" when we reported on a
         | flawed proposition to make millions of valuable .uk domains
         | available to Nominet members instead of the general public (our
         | article was entirely correct.)
         | 
         | Oh, they mad.
        
         | ljm wrote:
         | It's disappointing that there'll be basically no real
         | consequence for this for anyone involved.
         | 
         | They got 70% over 4 years, this Haworth got 30% in the last
         | year.
         | 
         | They're just rotating one group of people who leeched out their
         | worth to replace them with some others who will do the same.
        
         | mjw1007 wrote:
         | They didn't think they were in charge of running a domain
         | registrar.
         | 
         | They thought they were in charge of running a shiny business
         | that was in the process of transforming away from being
         | principally a domain registrar, in the name of growth. The CEO
         | was a mergers and acquisition specialist.
         | 
         | You can find their stated reasons for believing that growth was
         | vital here: https://www.nominet.uk/the-case-for-growth/
         | 
         | << Without growth, we can't innovate, and innovation is
         | essential if we are to be ready for new technologies and
         | emerging threats.
         | 
         | Without growth and innovation, we can't keep our vital staff
         | who connect more than 10 million .UK domains and maintain our
         | service without disruption or downtime. >>
         | 
         | I don't know whether they really believed these theories, or
         | whether they really think of growth as an end in itself and
         | were reaching for justifications, but the latter seems more
         | likely to me.
        
           | tinus_hn wrote:
           | Their idea probably was that if the company wasn't going to
           | grow, why would it need an expensive board member such as
           | themselves?
        
           | TheOtherHobbes wrote:
           | It's not obvious it was conscious. It's an endemic problem in
           | British business culture, and there are obvious rewards for
           | conforming.
           | 
           | People who do "growth" and "strategy" invariably seem to
           | believe they're worth the big money, even if they're actually
           | harming their organisations and lowering their effectiveness
           | and survival prospects.
           | 
           | If they're as good as they think they are they should have no
           | trouble selling their innovation elsewhere.
        
       | henvic wrote:
       | Where they ever responsible for .io too?
       | 
       | I hate how I paid for o1.io and their system failed on me. Poorly
       | designed system, and they ignored my attempts to get support.
       | Many weeks later they reverted my transaction with PayPal and
       | eventually announced the domain was 10k pounds. Damn it!
        
         | spzb wrote:
         | > Where they ever responsible for .io too?
         | 
         | Apparently not https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/.io
        
       | iSloth wrote:
       | It was close, but the right decision.
       | 
       | 53.5% turnout
       | 
       | For 52.74% Against 47.26%
        
         | dane-pgp wrote:
         | ~ 52% to 48%. The cursed numbers!
         | 
         | For those unfamiliar with the pareidolia / Baader-Meinhof
         | phenomenon regarding that ratio, let me provide a few examples,
         | from earliest to most recent:
         | 
         | https://m.facebook.com/13312631635/posts/the-cursed-52-48-ra...
         | 
         | https://old.reddit.com/r/LabourUK/comments/l6cgha/french_pre...
         | 
         | https://old.reddit.com/r/ukpolitics/comments/lzcfo9/breaking...
        
       ___________________________________________________________________
       (page generated 2021-03-22 23:00 UTC)