Question 2: If the categories outlined in Question 1 (or some version thereof) would not be useful in helping you make a participation decision, do you have any other recommendations that would assist in making that determination quickly?
The proposed categories are clear and useful for the most part. "Structural Design/Improvement" is a bit broad. One RySG member suggested dividing it into two separate categories: "Organization Review & Improvements" and "Community Participation."
I may revisit this question as the group moves forward and thoughts percolate.
I appreciate how this question relates to the ATRT recommendations but I wonder what the underlying goal is. Is the purpose to broaden the population of people who comment or simply to ease the process of commenting among those who currently comment. If the former, and perhaps even the latter, it might make sense to implement a notification system like the one the European Commission uses for registered organizations. As part of the registration, I specify areas of interest and I am notified when there are upcoming consultations in the categories to which I "subscribed." I would recommend a notification both when a comment period opened and perhaps a week before it closed. Is this badly outside the scope of what we're trying to do here? I think we have an issue of "activie" participants in the ICANN universe and more passive ones. The active ones are a little more aware of what's going on and the passive ones either need to be notified by active ones or often find out late that there's something going on that might impact them. Participation by the US Chamber, for example, or more recently ANA are good examples. If our goal is to expand the population of comments, allowing people to "register" their interest in DNS issues could bee a real boon. Thoughts?
I'm sure that Filiz will want to weigh in, but I don't think your idea is outside of the scope at all. While this particular ATRT Recommendation may have been targeted at making it easier for individuals and groups to contribute, it is a perennial goal of ICANN to increase and broaden participation levels.
You have proposed a creative potential application for the stratification scheme that was not on our radar screen. What I have to think about and research is how such a topic registration/notification system might be possible, technically, within the platforms available to ICANN for Public Comments.
Exciting suggestion and grist for the thought mill...
Just brainstorming for the moment as I begin thinking about ways Jonathan's idea might be implemented.
If we were handling Public Comments in ICANN's Confluence Wiki environment (an alternative being actively considered), we could create a separate Space (inside Public Comments) called "Sign-Up Here to Register Your Topic Category Interests" (or something similar). That Space could contain a separate Page for each of the Community Interest categories. Members could sign-up by using Confluence's "Watch" page feature, which would automatically register them to be notified via email upon any page change or comment added (RSS Feed is also available).
When a new Public Comment Topic is opened, the appropriate category would be assigned by Staff. Based upon that category, a brief Announcement (Title, Close Date, Link to Open Topic) could be placed on the appropriate Page within that registration/notification Space, which would automatically email its "Watchers." When the user opens the email link to the Wiki, they could immediately click on the added hyperlink which would then whisk them to that particular Topic in the Public Comments-Open area of the Wiki. We could also make another minor change (e.g., add ) to that Announcement line when the Topic reaches 1 week from closing which would trigger a 2nd email notification. To visualize how this might look:
Title
Close Date
Close Time
Link to Open Topic
1 Week To Go
Topic of Interest
31 August 2011
23:59 UTC
Wiki Hyperlink
This option is still crudely formulated and there may be better ways to do it, but it just might work and I wanted to get the idea documented so that it can be more thoroughly considered, researched, and tested.
That's certainly a low overhead way to implement it using existing tools so that could help a lot, I think. You could even post a notification on multiple watch pages so that you wouldn't need completely mutually exclusive categories. Finally, those pages would persist and enable folks to easily go look at a page of comment periods by category. Not bad.
Yes, the idea of being notified by email when a subject of interest opens is good : many people from Icann community have other real jobs and do not have the possibility to actively screen every morning the Icann website to check what is on the menu.
Having input from people who have a vision from the outside is great in any organisation to avoid routine, and anything that eases their participation is good.
Another possible way of improving the public comment could be to not make it public. I'll explain : On some topics, public comment with no limitations of who can comment, could create 'comment pollution'. Whereas having some topics commented by restricted users (the parties who might be impacted, in a first part) could make it easier and faster to solve issues. And then allow a second round, unrestricted.
That could be a complement for some working group, to help implementing decsisions. If this is out of scope, sorry, I as just carried away.
I think improving the actual solution could be done by adding a 'type of public' element (and then probably work on closed comment / open comments, just like the sessions at Icann meeting. ).
8 Comments
Don Blumenthal
The proposed categories are clear and useful for the most part. "Structural Design/Improvement" is a bit broad. One RySG member suggested dividing it into two separate categories: "Organization Review & Improvements" and "Community Participation."
I may revisit this question as the group moves forward and thoughts percolate.
Ken Bour
It is challenging to develop a set of categories that are:
We will appreciate your additional thoughts, as well as other views, on how to structure these groupings to optimize their utility.
Ken
Don Blumenthal
Fair enough. I'll change the last sentence of my comment to "I will revisit...."
Don
Jonathan Zuck
Folks,
I appreciate how this question relates to the ATRT recommendations but I wonder what the underlying goal is. Is the purpose to broaden the population of people who comment or simply to ease the process of commenting among those who currently comment. If the former, and perhaps even the latter, it might make sense to implement a notification system like the one the European Commission uses for registered organizations. As part of the registration, I specify areas of interest and I am notified when there are upcoming consultations in the categories to which I "subscribed." I would recommend a notification both when a comment period opened and perhaps a week before it closed. Is this badly outside the scope of what we're trying to do here? I think we have an issue of "activie" participants in the ICANN universe and more passive ones. The active ones are a little more aware of what's going on and the passive ones either need to be notified by active ones or often find out late that there's something going on that might impact them. Participation by the US Chamber, for example, or more recently ANA are good examples. If our goal is to expand the population of comments, allowing people to "register" their interest in DNS issues could bee a real boon. Thoughts?
Jonathan
Ken Bour
Jonathan:
I'm sure that Filiz will want to weigh in, but I don't think your idea is outside of the scope at all. While this particular ATRT Recommendation may have been targeted at making it easier for individuals and groups to contribute, it is a perennial goal of ICANN to increase and broaden participation levels.
You have proposed a creative potential application for the stratification scheme that was not on our radar screen. What I have to think about and research is how such a topic registration/notification system might be possible, technically, within the platforms available to ICANN for Public Comments.
Exciting suggestion and grist for the thought mill...
Ken
Ken Bour
Just brainstorming for the moment as I begin thinking about ways Jonathan's idea might be implemented.
If we were handling Public Comments in ICANN's Confluence Wiki environment (an alternative being actively considered), we could create a separate Space (inside Public Comments) called "Sign-Up Here to Register Your Topic Category Interests" (or something similar). That Space could contain a separate Page for each of the Community Interest categories. Members could sign-up by using Confluence's "Watch" page feature, which would automatically register them to be notified via email upon any page change or comment added (RSS Feed is also available).
When a new Public Comment Topic is opened, the appropriate category would be assigned by Staff. Based upon that category, a brief Announcement (Title, Close Date, Link to Open Topic) could be placed on the appropriate Page within that registration/notification Space, which would automatically email its "Watchers." When the user opens the email link to the Wiki, they could immediately click on the added hyperlink which would then whisk them to that particular Topic in the Public Comments-Open area of the Wiki. We could also make another minor change (e.g., add
) to that Announcement line when the Topic reaches 1 week from closing which would trigger a 2nd email notification. To visualize how this might look:
Title
Close Date
Close Time
Link to Open Topic
1 Week To Go
Topic of Interest
31 August 2011
23:59 UTC
Wiki Hyperlink
This option is still crudely formulated and there may be better ways to do it, but it just might work and I wanted to get the idea documented so that it can be more thoroughly considered, researched, and tested.
Ken
Jonathan Zuck
Hey Ken,
That's certainly a low overhead way to implement it using existing tools so that could help a lot, I think. You could even post a notification on multiple watch pages so that you wouldn't need completely mutually exclusive categories. Finally, those pages would persist and enable folks to easily go look at a page of comment periods by category. Not bad.
Jonathan
Frederic Guillemaut
Hello All,
Yes, the idea of being notified by email when a subject of interest opens is good : many people from Icann community have other real jobs and do not have the possibility to actively screen every morning the Icann website to check what is on the menu.
Having input from people who have a vision from the outside is great in any organisation to avoid routine, and anything that eases their participation is good.
Another possible way of improving the public comment could be to not make it public. I'll explain : On some topics, public comment with no limitations of who can comment, could create 'comment pollution'. Whereas having some topics commented by restricted users (the parties who might be impacted, in a first part) could make it easier and faster to solve issues. And then allow a second round, unrestricted.
That could be a complement for some working group, to help implementing decsisions. If this is out of scope, sorry, I as just carried away.
I think improving the actual solution could be done by adding a 'type of public' element (and then probably work on closed comment / open comments, just like the sessions at Icann meeting. ).