hi all, i volunteered to have a look at this issue with an eye to providing BC comments. here's a link to the public-comment page if you'd like to go deeper than what i say in this note. http://www.icann.org/en/news/public-comment/irtp-b-rec8-21feb12-en.htm first, a brief synopsis. the IRTP-B working group agreed that the current situation with regard to WHOIS status messages is confusing to registrants and presents operational issues for registrars and registries. we suggested that these messages be standardized in as simple a way as possible and, after some wrangling, concluded that the easiest way to do this is to: -- establish a clear definition of each status code in the EPP (extensible provisioning protocol - which is the standard by which transactions are structured between registrars and registries) -- establish and ICANN-controlled website where all these definitions would be maintained, and -- required that registrars provide a link to the relevant part of that web page next to next to the status in any WHOIS output this has already been through one round of public comment and has been approved by the GNSO Council. the comment deadline is 25-March. my suggestion is that we support this change for the following reasons: -- it will reduce confusion and errors for registrants -- it's a fast, light, simple approach to solving the problem -- it does not require any changes to the underlying protocol -- it is easy to maintain if there *are* changes to the protocol in the future why don't we kick this around on the list a bit and then i'll write up results with correct capitalization and punctuation. :-) mikey - - - - - - - - - phone 651-647-6109 fax 866-280-2356 web http://www.haven2.com handle OConnorStP (ID for public places like Twitter, Facebook, Google, etc.)