[CWG-Stewardship] The PC form

[Greg Shatan]

This will not be the first time that formatted comments have been used. The
IGO/INGO Working Group used a form, as did the Policy & Implementation
Working Group.  The previous comment period for this group did not use a
form, and the task of drawing a report and other useful information from
the comments was extremely difficult and time consuming.  Public comments
are intended to have a utility.  This approach will maximize that utility.
I support the use of the form.

Just out of curiosity, if there's no database behind the form, what is
behind the form?  A spreadsheet (a la Google forms)?

Greg Shatan

On Tue, Apr 21, 2015 at 3:43 PM, Andrew Sullivan <ajs at anvilwalrusden.com>
wrote:

> 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
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