Re: [wg-c] Re: nine principles for domain names

[Dave Crocker <dcrocker@brandenburg.com>]

At 03:26 PM 2/22/2000 +0000, Keith Gymer wrote:
>Another issue, however, is ambiguity and deliberate exploitation of such
>ambiguity leading to confusion of meaning (or an identity crisis;-) which is
>readily apparent from the alternative (mis)use of ISO 3166 ccTLDs for other
>than the geographical significance which was the reason for their original
>creation (eg .tm, .as, .md etc).  Personally, I don't think that such
>significant ambiguity would be desirable in any new gTLD.

My own opinion is that we should avoid trying to impose very much precision 
about the strings.

In the early stages, there is some experimental benefit is trying strings 
that are quite different, to get a sense of the types or areas of gTLDs 
that users want.  Eventually, having .att for attorneys and .law for 
lawyers seems just fine to me, in spite of the resulting ambiguity.

d/

ps.  Most of the nine "principles" describe requirements for which there 
are no straightforward or even accurate means to test achievement or 
failure.  They involve fuzzy human goals.  It does not matter that they are 
good goals, just that we can create mechanisms to achieve them or mechanism 
for testing whether we have achieved them.

=-=-=-=-=
Dave Crocker  <dcrocker@brandenburg.com>
Brandenburg Consulting  <www.brandenburg.com>
Tel: +1.408.246.8253,  Fax: +1.408.273.6464
675 Spruce Drive,  Sunnyvale, CA 94086 USA