Re: [ICANN-EU] Any interest in an alternative interface to the ICANN Q&A Forum?

[Jeff Williams <jwkckid1@ix.netcom.com>]

Andrew and all,

  Andrew, I think your idea has merit and would be supportive of it.
It would also be nice to repost questions through ICANN members
that DO have their PIN #'s to repost the questions and their answers
to the ICANN Q&A list....

  It is unfortunate that we must route around so much ICANN damage
presently.  :(

Andrew Bloch wrote:

> Use the power of the Internet -- let's not restrict ourselves by the ancient
> limitations that ICANN imposes on us.
>
> As most of you probably know by now, ICANN has set up a question and answer
> forum for members (only) to ask questions of nominees
>  http://members.icann.org/qa.html ).  Unfortunately, there are a few
> features missing that could be useful, and I've started thinking about
> creating an alternative interface to make up for the shortcomings.   I could
> create a mirror of all the questions and answers on ICANN's official site
> and provide some advanced features.
>
> Here are some of the features I'm considering:
>
> 1.  Allow users (members and non-members) to post comments in response to
> the nominees' answers.
>
> 2.  Forward new answers to interested users by email, so they don't have to
> visit the website frequently.
>
> 3.  A compact table showing which candidates have answered which questions.
>
> 4.  A clearinghouse or other method for activated members to volunteer to
> ask questions on behalf of non-activated members or members from other
> regions.  (Under ICANN rules, active members can only submit questions to
> nominees in their own region.)
>
> Before I start working on this, I wanted to measure people's interest
> (because I have a lot of other things that I should be doing with my time
> ;).  Please take a few seconds and send me your comments (to me only, unless
> you really think it's important enough to distract 100 people).
>
> Would you use any or all of these features?
>
> Can you think of other features you'd like?
>
> Which features are most important, if there isn't enough time to implement
> them all?
>
> *** If you are a candidate, would you try to read and/or respond to users
> comments?
>
> Do you think a significant portion of at-large members will find this
> useful?
>
> This would be most useful if as many members as possible know of its
> existence and use it.  Would you help promote it via any contacts you have
> with appropriate websites, email lists, etc.?
>
> If a lot of people do use it, we will probably need to run it on another
> server, perhaps mirrored locally to each region.  Do you have access to a
> web server that could handle the possible traffic?  (preferably a unix box
> plus perl with the cgi and lwp libraries).
>
> I have other projects that I should be working on.  Are you a web developer
> that could do this faster and/or better than me, with time to get this going
> in the next 24-48 hours?  Do you have any scripts that would be very useful?
> Or, should we instead involve a site like http://www.slashdot.org that
> already handles user comments and can support the bandwidth?
>
> Thanks for your responses,
>
> Andy Bloch

Regards,

--
Jeffrey A. Williams
Spokesman INEGroup (Over 112k members strong!)
CEO/DIR. Internet Network Eng/SR. Java/CORBA Development Eng.
Information Network Eng. Group. INEG. INC.
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