Richard,
Why should anyone want to join an organization that does nothing?
A legitimate user organization works to solve user concerns. This group has
not even discussed any user issues, let alone proposed any possible
solutions. When was the last time that anyone on this list started a
sustained discussion on:
transfers
deletes
UDRP
sales of bulk WHOIS data
privacy
escrow
collisions in namespace
Internationalized domain names
abusive registrar practices
namespace differentiation
new gTLD evaluation
hoarding/warehousing
the lack of Code of Conduct industry guidelines
registry-level competition
policy formulation procedures
At the moment, there are at least three different Task Forces requesting
comments on user issues: WHOIS, transfers, and deletes. Will this
organization provide any commentary to actually help solve the user issues
being considered by these task forces? Of course not. Instead it will
continue to portray itself as a champion of the user without ever doing a
damn thing to actually help solve the user problems of the moment. Every
day, this group reminds me more and more of the IDNO that claimed to
represent individual domain name holders but never did a single thing to
address their issues and concerns.
All of this talk about outreach is far too premature. You have to give
people something of value if you want to entice them to join. So far, I see
nothing of value... no discussion papers, no recommendations, no letters to
ICANN, no letters to the Department of Commerce, no correspondence with the
GAC, no dialogue or interaction with the ERC, no results from any working
groups, no dedicated working group lists, no bylaws, no proposed solutions to
any user problems... in short, no real reason to join.
As a user, I am looking for a group that offers the reasonable prospect of
delivering results by providing real solutions to real problems. In my
opinion, that isn't happening here. Perhaps you can manage to turn things
around, but I, for one, am getting very tired of waiting for results that
never seem to materialize.