Re: [gtld-com] Suggestions regarding the gtld report

["Milton Mueller" <Mueller@syr.edu>]

Bruce:
Thanks for your contribution, it contributes substantially to 
the committee's progress. 

I have read your suggestions carefully. There are still a few
sentences in the beginning of the report that I believe to be confusing
or extraneous. If they are removed your draft is an acceptable 
compromise. 

Paragraph 3: 
Please delete the first sentence: "Indeed all participants 
had in some measure or other a vision of how the gTLD namespace 
should look." That sentence contributes little of substance and
is simply untrue. I myself do NOT have any vision of how the 
namespace should "look." Nor do I see any indication that several 
other constituencies do. If you do not delete this sentence
you could replace "all" with "some."

Paragraph 2:
I would prefer to just delete paragraph 2 in its entirety. The meaning 
of the phrase "structure the evolution of the generic top level 
namespace" was clear from Lynn's October 2002 statement 
and from the extensive discussion of the issue that took 
place at the Amsterdam Dec. 2002 meeting. The Board wants
to know whether we support "taxonomic rationalization."

I do not know what to make of the statement in Paragraph 2
that "Others saw no conflict between the concept of a taxonomy 
and a bottom-up, demand–driven system." I do not recall
any such expressions from the gTLD Committee's deliberations,
and I do not think such a position is coherent. There IS a
conflict; one either works from a taxonomy with predefined
categories, or one permits bottom-up, applicant-driven evolution. 
If anyone doubts this I invite them to look up the definition of the 
word "taxonomy" in any dictionary.

At any rate, if we did not understand the meaning of the 
question the Board asked us, we should have bounced it back
to them for clarification before answering it. We do no one any 
good by raising doubt about what question we are answering. I 
believe that we substantially reduce the value of the report and 
fail to fulfill our policy development role if we muddy the waters in 
such a fashion.

>>> "Bruce Tonkin" <Bruce.Tonkin@melbourneit.com.au> 05/21/03 08:07AM >>>