Call for Participation: New gTLDs Consensus
The volunteers at ICANNwiki would like to invite you to join us in a new grassroots effort. We’ve created a space and a process to help the community coalesce consensus around the New gTLDs policy issue. Our first target is modest: We are seeking 10 forward thinking ICANN people with a diversity of affiliations to help us frame a consensus statement of exactly what the “New gTLDs Policy Issue” is. You can participate in this important process by visiting Consensus:New gTLDs and adding your name to the list.
The New gTLDs Consensus will be bootstrapped by succeeding at a series of three consensus polls. Each stage builds on the preceding stage, adding additional sections to the consensus document and increasing the breadth of participation.
Consensus Polling is about winning together or refusing to play the game. It is only really appropriate when a group of individuals desire to collectively solve a problem that affects them all. It seeks to avoid voting for candidate options when such a vote would generate winners and losers and thus divide the community that must support the result of the collective decision.
Rather than a menu of candidates to choose from, the entire process is controlled by an evolving YES/NOT YET barometer or acceptance meter. The acceptance meter reflects the suitability of a single community-owned community-developed collaborative solution. All participants are free to change their status at any time. A YES status says “I believe the current articulation of our solution is good enough.” A Not Yet status says “I have concerns that haven’t been adequately addressed by the current solution.” Only when the YES number passes some high, pre-specified threshold (e.g., 90%) can the solution proposed be considered to reflect the consensus of the community.
If you are interested in playing a role in this important process please visit Consensus:New gTLDs and participate.
For more information about what’s going on in the domain name and ICANN community, go to http://www.ICANNwiki.org and participate.
Add comment November 15th, 2006
been buzzing around the Internet lately is that the top-level domain name registrar agreements provide for a mandatory five-day grace period before the registrars have to pay the registries for the domain names. This policy was put in place by ICANN to protect clients who may have made a mistake in a registration (or a spelling error), allowing them to get a total refund for the domain name. However, domainers, those that wheel and deal in buying and selling domains (many of them multi-registrars) have taken advantage of this business opportunity by registering many thousands of the expiring domains that are released every day and using the grace period to see if a domain generates traffic and revenue over the base registration fee. If it appears that a domain doesn’t generate enough real traffic to warrant a monetization process, the domain is returned to the registries within the five-day grace period for the refund. If the domain does appear to attract traffic, it’s linked to pay-per-click advertising from one of the prominent providers typically seen at a conference like TRAFFIC.The operators of the registries are spending time and effort to process these temporary registrations, and they aren’t complaining as they benefit from access to the increased credit deposits they hold on behalf of their many registrar clients that are participating as domain tasters. If it weren’t for a high degree of automation, this business technique would not work.