[jig] Single character labels question framing

[Avri Doria <avri@xxxxxxx>]

Hi,

I hope it is ok, for an observer to the group to ask framing questions this 
early in the process.  If the questions are premature (or stupid), please 
ignore it.


While I understand that there are financial and policy issues to be discussed 
in terms of IDN single character (like which are ccTLDs and which are gTLDs and 
is there some sort of premium on single character idn labels) , I think we need 
to be careful in our conversion to distinguish which sorts of labels we are 
talking about at any moment. 


A single character a-label is fundamentally different from a single character 
u-label (though occasionally they look alike).
I also think that the IDN WG indicates that there should not be a blanket 
prohibition of single character u-labels, though there are considerations to be 
considered.

So in some sense I think this discussion may boil down to the following 
questions:

Question 1: do single character a-labels remain prohibited? 

Is that even an issue for this group?  I think probably not

Question 2: which, if any, single character u-labels should be prohibited and 
why?

E.g. extended ASCII u-labels or Cyrillic u-labels that resemble LDH-labels are 
problematic from the point of view of confusion and should probably be 
prohibited.  But otherwise what reason could there be for limiting single 
character idn u-labels?

Question 3: for those u-labels not prohibited what policy conditions pertain?

This might be the bulk of the discussion.

Another differentiation people could make, and seem to make in discussions, is 
which u-labels are 'words'.  Somehow, it seems that stating that if a single 
u-label represents a real-world word it is somehow more acceptable then just a 
single character u-label that does not represent a real-world word. I am not 
sure I understand why this would be the case, though the financial 
considerations may be different there is no reason that any TLD needs to 
represent a word - as the set of existing TLDs shows there are very few words 
among them.

Finally, reading the IDN WG report with these issues in mind is somewhat 
confusing to me in that they do not seem to have made such distinctions.  I 
would be curious to know whether this sort of analysis was considered.

Again if this note is out of place or badly timed, please ignore and excuse.


a.