...

you are confused. and in any case this is off-topic. take it to namedroppers, but before you do, please read rfc's 1033, 1034, 1035, 2136, 2181, and

2317.

Can someone please tell me how a change to a critical component of the Internet which has the capacity to cause harm is not an operational issue?

He didn't say that. He said that there is a mailing list called "namedroppers" for discussion of DNS protocol changes and related DNS issues. And he also said that if you want to get very far with your proposal the list members would expect you to be familiar with the RFCs which document the existing DNS protocol. And even though he didn't say it, it is true that your proposal is not an operational issue. Now if somebody would actually code this new DNS protocol into a DNS server and a resolver (or some clients) then maybe it would become an operational issue. --Michael Dillon