[CWG-Stewardship] The PC form

[Andrew Sullivan]

Hi,

Having reflected on the proposed form for public comment for a few
more minutes, I think that it should not be used.  This is not to deny
the probable utility it would bring.  But I think it will itself be a
distraction.

The community was promised an open CCWG process with the normal ICANN
procedures.  As it is, the document is late, the document that gets
posted will have significant gaps (this is a charitable way of saying
"incomplete"), and the normal length of public comment is not going to
be met.  If we now add a completely new form that nobody has ever
heard suggested before, people are going to wonder what's being hidden
behind this innovation.  (Indeed, several of us seemed to have exactly
that reaction on the call.)

It would be quite different if the plans to use this mechanism had
been mooted before -- even weeks ago, but ideally in Singapore or
earlier.  Without having done that, this will look to those who
mistrust ICANN as yet another way to filter input so that anything
critical doesn't get heard.

I'm moreover quite sceptical of the technical support behind this.
The existing public comment mechanism uses SMTP (email) and a
confirmation loop before taking that mail and putting it in a public
archive.  It's been working for years.  On the call, I heard assurance
that there's no database behind the proposed form (which, I note, was
itself not actually complete in time for the call).  In my day job for
the past several years I have either designed, developed, or managed
the developers of software.  There needs to be some form handling that
will take the input from the form and put it somewhere.  This might
not be a relational database, but there is _some_ software, however
trivial, to develop here.  This seems like work that would be valuable
to do, but not work that is so valuable that we ought to drop other
things to implement this new feature at the very last second before
public comment should start.  If one of my agile development squads
came to me the day before the end of a sprint, and suggested designing
and implementing a completely new mechanism the day before our demo to
the product owner, I'd suggest -- very, very firmly -- that perhaps
that idea belonged in the next sprint.  If there is any software
problem at all (I hesitate to use the word "glitch", but perhaps it
will awaken memories for some of you), then it will raise all sorts of
issues about preparation, execution of the task, and so on.

Therefore, while I agree that this is an innovation that ought to be
pursued, I suggest that it ought to be pursued in the context of a
less fraught issue for a task that has been smoother than this one has
been.

Best regards,

A

-- 
Andrew Sullivan
ajs at anvilwalrusden.com