​As some may know I was once heavily involved in previous work regarding metrics by which to evaluate the public utility of the gTLD expansion​; indeed ALAC had to fight to include consumer metrics which the domain industry wanted to avoid.

Even at this point I believe that, in the interest of inflicting a new round of expansion on us ASAP, the domain industry is going to twist and turn in order to paint the current expansion in an artificially positive bias. This needs to be resisted in the name of accuracy and fairness.

IMO there are also lessons to be learned from the experiences of communities that were marginalized (or completely shut out) regarding their hopes for public-service gTLDs... I'm thinking .nyc, .gay and .music as examples.These are not numeric metrics but IMO still factor into an overall evaluation of whether the expansion served the public interest. In general I think that the community evaluation process (and by extension the applicant support program) were among the bigger failures of the process to date.

Given my present circumstances I can't spare the time to be the main pen-holder on this, however I have already committed to Carlton that I would assist and give feedback once an initial draft statement is in place.

​- Evan​