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

["Andrew Bloch" <abloch@alum.mit.edu>]

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