The topic of variants isn't new and the issues we are trying to examine here in this group may have already been defined and/or dealt with somewhere on this planet. <br><br>We have experts from different fields here, and not necessarily all of us are well informed about the existing practices related to variants. Hence an idea: how about holding an educational session for the entire group where we will review how variant issues are managed in:<br>
<br>1. Existing ICANN TLD programs (Fast Track, Applicant Guidebook)<br>2. IDN ccTLD registries - variants on the top level<br>3. TLD registries - variants on the second level<br>4. DNS standards (some background on DNAMEs might be helpful)<br>
5. RFCs that deal with string similarity (4790, 3743 for Chinese, 5992 for Cyrillic, others?)<br>6. (possibly) Trademark laws<br><br>I'm happy to contribute to part 3 sharing the .tel experience with managing variants. We support IDNs in 15 languages with different degrees of variant management in Chinese, Japanese and Russian.<br>
<br>Would the group support such an effort? <br><br>Best regards,<br>Vladimir Shadrunov<br>