Hello All, There has been some debate recently over how to report public comments. I think there is a danger in turning the public comment forum into a voting environment (e.g counting how many votes for and against a particular policy). It is the GNSO Council that votes according to its formal procedure on whether to recommend a particular policy to the ICANN Board. GNSO Council members should vote according to what they believe is in the best interests of the GNSO and ICANN, in accordance with the ICANN mission and core values, based on the information that have available. The policy development process involves collecting input from constituencies that represent different perspectives. Some of these perspectives may be conflicting. The purpose of task force and committee meetings is to try to understand the various perspectives, and identify a compromise that is acceptable to all. The public comment process should be used to gain new perspectives that we have not otherwise obtained from the constituency input. Thus the staff reporting of public comments should focus on identifying new perspectives not already covered in the constituency inputs, that should be considered prior to any decision. It is reasonable from a factual point of view to summarise all the comments. Where many parties express the same view, it would be appropriate to summarise the view once and identify the parties that supported that view. There is not much value in having individual constituency members submit exactly the same view as a constituency statement. However some constituency members may have a different or additional view to what was expressed in the constituency statement, and it is worthwhile this being submitted separately via the public comment process. Ideally all public comments would clearly relate their views with respect to ICANN's mission and core values. E.g a third party may be concerned that a new policy would affect their business. While this is a valid view, it would not on its own be relevant unless it could be explained that competition in the market as a whole would be affected. Regards, Bruce Tonkin