From: Mark Tearle [mtearle@tearle.com]
Sent: Thursday, 29 August 2002 12:06 AM
To: Jo Lim
Subject: Re: new 2LD proposal

Hi Jo

> Hi Mark
>
> In May/June 2002 you submitted a proposal as part of auDA's 
> consideration of new 2LDs in the .au domain.
>

*nod*  Indeed, I did :)

> Comments on the papers are due by 27 September 2002.


>
> Second Meeting - Tuesday 13 August 2002
>

*snip*

>    6. conf.au
>    The Panel noted that past use of conf.au has been extremely limited,
>    and agreed that better promotion of the 2LD might improve its
>    popularity. There are no other 2LDs which cater for short-term events
>    such as conferences, although it could be argued that asn.au and
>    org.au could meet this purpose.

AFAIK conf.au in uniquely Australian.  It should be noted that asn.au and 
org.au would exclude groups that organise conferences on a strictly for 
profit basic.

>    It was pointed out that short-term
>    registration is not necessarily useful, since the ongoing "life" of a
>    conference is often unclear eg. many conferences are annual events,
>    and conference papers may form a valuable online archive of
>    proceedings.

It does however mirror the life of the typical conference organising committee.  
The archiving of papers can be an issue pushed to the parent organisation in 
many cases; perhaps the panel might draw on the experiences of librarians and 
archivists to answer the issues here.

My proposal did attempt to address the problem of ongoing conferences (in the 
proposed policy rules); and left it up to good faith and the registrars discretion.

>
>    There is clear evidence of support from the Linux community.

Hmm, that is one of my hats - http://www.linux.conf.au/
LCA has been one of the more prominent users and has experienced difficulties with 
the current arrangements.

My work hat (The University of Western Australia) would also suggest use of the 
domain to groups with the University organising conferences.

> However,
>    the Panel questioned whether other entities that run conferences would
>    find this 2LD more useful than other legitimate choices.

conf.au would merely provide a more appropriate option, and is unlikely to 
negatively affect the other 2LDs

> As with the
>    club.au proposal, is conferenceness a defining characteristic, or
>    would most users intuitively search for the organisation running the
>    conference, or the subject matter of the conference?

This would depend on the topic and organisation running the conference. 
Personally, I'd most likely search on the name of the conference.

*snip*


> NEW 2LDS - Discussion Paper
>
> New Names Advisory Panel
>
>    August 2002
>

*snip*

>    Issues for consideration
>
>    1. Preservation of the overall integrity and usability of the .au
>    domain space
>

>    The current 2LDs are generally well-known and understood by
>    registrants and Internet users in general. The Panel wonders how many
>    2LDs can be created before the usability of the .au domain is
>    undermined? For example, if auDA was to create an additional 10 new
>    2LDs to sit alongside the existing 8 2LDs, would users start to "lose
>    track" of what the different 2LDs are and what they represent? Or
>    would they lose track at 25 new 2LDs? Or 50? Would the nature of the
>    new 2LDs have an impact on how many new ones could be created? Does
>    the relative position of the .au domain in the context of widely used
>    international gTLDs and de facto gTLDs (like .tv or .bz) mean that
>    there is already considerable complexity undermining the usability of
>    .au?

The low teens are likely to be the threshold point in terms of what people 
could track.  New 2LDs would have to be demonstrateably viable. Closed 2LDs 
are unlikely to garner enough use to be widely viable. Perhaps there is need 
for a 2LD that only contains closed 3LDs? eg med.closed.au, law.closed.au

>    2. DNS hierarchy issues
>
>    The existing 2LDs are very broad in nature and accommodate several
>    different types of eligible registrant. For example, within edu.au
>    there are primary and secondary schools, universities, TAFEs and other
>    education and training institutions. Several of the proposed new 2LDs
>    could be viewed as sub-sets of the existing 2LDs, sometimes of more
>    than one. What impact would that have on the existing 2LDs? For
>    example, would the creation of university.au devalue the appeal or
>    utility of edu.au, or threaten the existing 2LD's financial viability?
>    Clearly, a number of the submissions for new 2LDs anticipate
>    substantial benefits for the proponents. A view has been expressed
>    that this, in itself, is insufficient grounds to justify acceptance of
>    a proposal if as result the DNS as a whole is weakened.

New 2LDs that would be subsets of existing closed 2LDs would devalue the DNS.  
It would suggest a management problem with the existing 2LD.

Yours
Mark
-- 
Mark Tearle - mark@tearle.com "Happiness is not a lifestyle, happiness is"
                                  - greeting card