Hi all

Maybe my post will be off topic, but I feel the desire to explain why this discussion makes me uncomfortable.

“Confusingly similar” things exist also in the real world - sorry for considering the domain name system a virtual world, even if there are some very “real" features attached, including money changing hands. The problem, in the real world, is approached by educating people to identify differences, so that they are no longer - or at least less - “confused by similarities”. Bees are confusingly similar to wasps, and some edible mushrooms are confusingly similar to some poisonous ones. The difference between the real and the virtual world is that in the real world you cannot eliminate the “confusing differences”, so you are forced to educate people to learn the differences. Incidentally, these differences and varieties are exactly the things that make the real world so interning and stimulating, and not dull.

Back to the practical issue at hand, would it not be more effective - and less complicated - have educational campaigns instead than crafting different and complex rules that, moreover, have to take into account cultural differences that our current mainstream Internet world is by and large even unable to understand? Bill has quoted languages, but there are cultural differences that go even beyond language, and that are not immediately understandable to engineers that come from a different culture, leaving alone the possibility to engineer a solution that takes these differences into account. Disclaimer: I am an engineer.

This in not an uncommon problem - and here I am *really* going off topic. It falls in the broad category of “finding an engineering solution to a cultural problem”. All attempts of this type that I am aware of have failed. The problem is that At-Large has to play a role in the Internet community - again, from my very personal point of view - that addresses the wide cultural, economic, social, etc. differences within the At-Large community, not to fall in the trap of supporting one or the other engineering pseudo-solutions that do not solve the problem, but give the impression that “people endorse it”.

Cheers,
Roberto



On 29.08.2024, at 19:24, Carlton Samuels via CPWG <cpwg@icann.org> wrote:

Hi Bill:
Responses in line

==============================
Carlton A Samuels
Mobile: 876-818-1799
Strategy, Process, Governance, Assessment & Turnaround
=============================


On Wed, 28 Aug 2024 at 16:40, Bill Jouris via CPWG <cpwg@icann.org> wrote:
Hi Carlton, 

I'm all in favor of making the strongest argument possible. But I think it's a mistake to say "Our brief, apparently, is to advocate for the barely attentive end user."  "Barely attentive" assumes that the user would have any reason to suspect that the plural of something that he remembers as singular is something entirely different.

....even with a faultless memory, I would rather think at this point the user is committed to an action. Get it done and see the result.  Then, respond as best as you can.
  

If I see plum.org, and the actual name is plums.org, will it occur to me that there's a difference?
 
presence of mind, maybe not!  But one could look see....
 
  I beg leave to doubt it.  It's not that I can't see the difference (part of my job is proofreading, after all).  It's just that there is no particular reason to think that the difference is important in this context.  Users generally are simply not paranoid enough to be suspicious of these things. 

..and we should not wish them to be! Ordinarily, I posit the journey of discovery could be a learning experience.  
 

Bill Jouris


Sent from Yahoo Mail on Android

On Wed, Aug 28, 2024 at 9:32 AM, Carlton Samuels via CPWG
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