The topic of variants isn't new and the issues we are trying to examine here in this group may have already been defined and/or dealt with somewhere on this planet. We have experts from different fields here, and not necessarily all of us are well informed about the existing practices related to variants. Hence an idea: how about holding an educational session for the entire group where we will review how variant issues are managed in: 1. Existing ICANN TLD programs (Fast Track, Applicant Guidebook) 2. IDN ccTLD registries - variants on the top level 3. TLD registries - variants on the second level 4. DNS standards (some background on DNAMEs might be helpful) 5. RFCs that deal with string similarity (4790, 3743 for Chinese, 5992 for Cyrillic, others?) 6. (possibly) Trademark laws I'm happy to contribute to part 3 sharing the .tel experience with managing variants. We support IDNs in 15 languages with different degrees of variant management in Chinese, Japanese and Russian. Would the group support such an effort? Best regards, Vladimir Shadrunov