[wg-c] WG-C Report

[Justin McCarthy <justinmac@uswest.net>]

What this newcomer doesn't like about the report is the
blatant inequities that come to light in the section
entitled "Arguments opposing the consensus" in coverage of
the first issue of rough consensus. Just the nomenclature of
this section alone undermines consensus opposing viewpoints.
The bifurcation of the two arguments sections into a "pro"
and "con" format, lead one to believe that equal
representation is going to be given to "arguments
supporting" and "arguments opposing". This is not the case.

The arguments supporting the consensus position are made
eloquently and passionately, and are fully expanded on. The
arguments opposing weakly state a point and then immediately
knock the point down. This doesn't seem balanced because,
first of all, there's no (immediate) refute to each point
brought up in the arguments in the support section and
second, why should all of these refutations (which take up
more text space than the actual arguments) even be in a
section titled "arguments opposing consensus"? The net
effect is to weaken the argument of the report by making it
seem unbalanced or biased.  The opportunity to build ethos
by fully understanding/mastering the opposing argument is
neglected here.

By the same token, there's an apparent contradiction that I
feel compelled to point out. In paragraph #3 of the
"Arguments Supporting" section of the first rough consensus
issue, the report seems to be advocating new TLDs. This is,
the report argues, so that new companies that desire the
same word/phrase.com can compete through same word/phrase at
a different TLD. In the paragraph after the next (#5) of
that same section, the report argues against the rampant
registrations of country TLDs because they are creating
trademark infringement issues. Why would the introduction of
secondary TLDs not invoke the same trademark issues?
Perhaps the unique specificity/functionality of the newly
proposed TLDs and the new, more selective
registration/provable charter method need to be emphasized
more here.

Other than that (Mrs. Lincoln), I think this is a good
report.