On Fri, Aug 5, 2016 at 10:00 AM, Andrew Sullivan <ajs@anvilwalrusden.com> wrote:
Hi,

On Fri, Aug 05, 2016 at 12:00:08AM -0400, Greg Shatan wrote:
> I certainly had assumed that there would be a comment period run through
> the ICANN website, like most (if not all) of the other implementation
> contracts and other documentation relating to implementing the transition.

The Trust has a responsibility to run a community comment on this
effort no matter what, and we're going to do so. 

​GS:  I hadn't considered fully the issue of whether the CWG has a responsibility to run a community comment on this effort, since I hadn't thought to frame it in such terms.  Having framed the issue that way, I'm hard-pressed to think that the CWG would not have that responsibility, given its overall responsibility to the names community with regard to the IANA Transition.  How best to discharge that responsibility (and the Trust's responsibility and the numbers community's corresponding responsibility) could be a matter for discussion, if there were some flexibility indicated by all parties.  I saw flexibility from the numbers front.  The statement above seems pretty inflexible.

 
Since the Trust is
offering this to the Internet community, we think it only appropriate
(and in keeping with the commitments we're making to the other OCs)
that we operate this one in a way that is easier and more approachable

​GS:  I assume you mean easier and more approachable as compared to other IETF Trust comments, and not in comparison to the ICANN comment process, which I already find easy and approachable.

​
 
by the other community participants as well (see below on that), so
we're going to need to do something that's public facing, and we will
do that no matter what also.

I think we're going to be pressed for time after, so running a single
process will probably return better results for the transition, but of
course the Trust takes no position on how the operational communities
ought to do things for their own decision-making. 

​GS: I'm not opposed to a single process, but starting the discussion of a possible single process by saying "my way or not at all" is not optimal from a collaborative standpoint.  Personally, I find it harder to consider agreement to a proposition when I'm told that resistance is futile.  (I never got "A's" for conduct in primary school, I'll admit, because I tended to question authority....)​
 
Certainly, if the
names community wants to run a comment period through other
infrastructure, it's appropriate that it do so and I cannot imagine
anyone objecting.  It will make our task of putting things together
harder, however, and we won't have a lot of time.

GS: ​This seems to assume that under the IETF Trust plan, the IETF Trust would have the task of putting things together.  That is not my assumption (and maybe I'm reading too much into this statement, but it's hard not to given the context in which it's being offered).  It's probably better to have a discussion (without declarations of pre-conditions or assumptions) and I would urge that stance instead.  I would think a discussion along those lines could quickly arrive at an appropriate process that considers the needs of all communities and the IETF Trust (which isn't a community, but rather an arm of a community).

> IANA Transition.  It would be an odd outlier not to have a
> transition-related comment in the ICANN public comment system.

I note, however, that the actual transition proposal didn't go through
that system, because it involved the joint output of multiple
communities. 

​GS: The actual transition proposal went through the ICG, which was set up for just that purpose, with the input and membership of all the communities, and which was chartered "to coordinate the
development of a proposal among the communities affected by the IANA functions," to review and ensure the compatibility of those proposals and to have a single deliverable. The IETF Trust is not that and has not been given those responsibilities.

 
I think it would be an outlier if something that
involved all the OCs received comments in a forum aimed at just one of
them.

​GS: I would not characterize the ICANN public comment forum as one aimed only at the names community.  Comments come in from every quarter (sometimes by the hundreds or even the thousands).  By contrast, as you've noted, the IETF Trust's comment forums have so far been aimed solely at the IETF [Trust] community. ​
 

​

> The ICANN public comment system is transparent -- the comments are
> announced by ICANN, each "comment forum" (to which the comments are
> submitted) is publicly available and stays publicly available as an archive
> (you can find comments going back years, if you want).  You can see and
> read submitted comments in real time.

ICANN's system, under the hood, is a mailing list.  The IETF has some
experience with getting input by mailing lists :-)  However,

​True, but it's part of an overall comment forum set-up that's been working quite well for some time now.​
 

> I went looking for the IETF Trust comment infrastructure.  I did find links
> to three public comment periods on the IETF Trust home page at
> http://trustee.ietf.org/.  Two of these link to pdf pages that request the
> comment.

historically, the IETF Trust had to serve the IETF only, so the Trust
ran any comment efforts it had to run through the usual IETF mailing
lists.  For this case, we're going to instantiate a new mailing list
to receive the comments (on just this topic) instead, roughly the way
that ICANN does.  Given that the IETF already runs dozens of mailing
lists that handle volumes of mail orders of magnitude larger than
anything that happens in any public comment I've ever seen, I am
confident that there will be no problem with the infrastructure. 

GS: ​I don't doubt competence to run an email list.  But why build a new thing when something acceptable already exists?  (As has been argued on behalf of having the IETF Trust hold the IANA IPR)​

 
The
IETF also keeps mail archives dating even from before the IETF
existed.  So, I'm not worried about the durability of the archive.

​GS: Transparency, accessibility (both in absolute and logical terms) and organizing them in an expected place relative to related efforts is important, not just durability.​
 

I suspect it will be less confusing to people if we have one place to
submit comments. 

​GS: I don't doubt we could dispel some modest confusion regardless of what we do, and I don't think that any one solution is necessarily less confusing than any other one.​

 
But if we have to do it in multiple places, then
that's what we must do.

​GS: We don't have to -- but there's more than one way to come to that result if we approach this in a collaborative manner.  I had a classmate in middle school who owned the nicest football in school (NFL quality, and he had taken the time to apply treatments to it just like the pros), but he insisted that he play quarterback if we were going to use his ball, and if we didn't use his ball, he would go home.  We tried that for a bit, but ultimately we all felt that didn't work.  He did take his ball and go home, and we played with the scuffed and lesser-quality ball (and a variety of quarterbacks), and a slightly awkward air.  After a couple of weeks, he came back, initially without his football, and played quarterback some of the time.  Ultimately, he threw his football into the pile, without any conditions.  Things went quite well after that, and we enjoyed both his ball and his team play.   

Best regards,

A

--
Andrew Sullivan
ajs@anvilwalrusden.com

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