Re: [wg-c] A Position Paper on some new gTLDs

[Eric Brunner <brunner@world.std.com>]

Kent,

I've asked Chris Ambler for clarification, as I understand his statement
to be an expectation that domains for all ethnic and geographic groups
come into existence simultaneously. I honestly can't imagine how such a
big bang could be engineered, and it isn't the operational experience of
the ccTLDs, or of the address registries. I'll ask Martin Mueller also,
as his comments ended on the same colorful note.

Supposing for the sake of argument that all domain requests were queued
until the user characterizations were complete and registrars found for
each -- using the ccTLD space just for numbers -- on the order of several
hundred -- what process could, with what participation, complete the job
of exhausting the characterization-space and registrar-space within some
reasonable period of time?

I think that as responsible discussants, those who offer a solution they
describe as more favorable, requiring only some delay, need to attempt
to characterize the delay itself, parameterized if necessary by the set
of process and participation models they've in mind or think likely.

If a names czar ran over the list of social identities contained in the
Ethnologue database and assigned each to NSI the process could be complete
in the blink of an eye. If the registry association takes substantive
process, and if there is no names czar and substantive process is also
required to evaluate each entry in the Ethnologue database, then the
policy that requires that "all wait" until all are "qualified" can be
characterized in part by its delay property.

For those who haven't heard of the Ethnologue, it is a work of the Summer
Institute of Linguistics (www.sil.org), and catalogues in the 13th edition
some 6,700 languages in 228 countries -- not all of them Indian to be
sure ;-), but it is an indicator of what "groups" mean when one is very
careful to something other than a component of a strawperson argument.

To be fair, there may be better qualified (what the qualification is is
not necessary to define) proposals for a "group" than the one I wrote.
I just don't know of it, if I did I'd have cribbed from it. The argument
offered by Chris Ambler is unfairness due to priority, in Milton Mueller's
comment in the same vein, no reason for priority for this (my) specific
proposal, and while he and I do have a history (the dnso-ip list), I've
no reason to think his views are directed at the author, only at the
model (scope and policy) and claimants.

---

One minor point, in your final para, touching on the criteria for TLD
semantics, you suggest as an example that .naa registrants would tend
to use that registry exclusively. I agree, however I just want to let
it be known that some registrants, e.g., the Pequots, will maintain a
high profile in .com, in addition to their prospective use of .naa.

Thanks for reading the draft,
Eric