Dear colleagues,
Just a philosophical note. When we designate variants, we are creating something which is a hard block: if a proposed TLD differs from an existing TLD only by one or more variants, it is blocked. Period. That was our rationale for using a very narrow filter to designate variants.
In contrast, Confusables are merely a statement to the Similarity Review Panel saying "You might want to look at this." If they decide it is a problem, fine. If they decide it is not a problem in a particular case, fine. If they decide it is never a problem and can always be ignored, that's fine too -- no harm done.
The thing is, if we do NOT include something which the Similarity Review Panel would have thought important, except that they didn't think of it because we didn't mention it -- that is a problem. Which is why we should err on the side of including cases here.
Bill Jouris