I half agree.

I am fully onboard with asking questions to answer questions we don't already know; it's not the aim of this effort to be redundant. But that is a fairly open field, because ALAC has very little research on what the world's end-users need from ICANN.

On the other hand, I'm not sure that the nature of the questions and answers will be able to inform a specific decision because, frankly, I don't think we'll be able to ask random end-users questions with an ALAC-decision level of detail. (Imagine asking your parents or neighbours for their thoughts on closed TLDs....)

Especially in a first limited go around with this level of funding, I think the best we can ask for are answers that we can analyze to inform ALAC in a general way of end-user priorities and views on high-level issues such as abuse, trust and IDNs. To use Alex's phrasing, we may consider the project a success if we are able to convert some "unknown knowns" into "known knowns", and maybe during analysis unearth some "unknown unknowns" (that upon discovery become "unknown knowns" to be researched at a later time).

- Evan