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.gay flunks community review for second time

Kevin Murphy, October 9, 2015, 11:08:29 (UTC), Domain Policy

dotgay LLC has failed in its bid to eliminate its competitors for the new gTLD .gay for the second time.
After an unprecedented re-run of its Community Priority Evaluation, the applicant scored just 10 out of the 16 available points.
That’s exactly the same as it scored the first time around, exactly one year ago, still four points short of success.
For the second time, dotgay scored zero from a possible four points on the “Nexus” criteria — the link between the string “gay” and the community dotgay wants to serve.
The CPE panel decision reads:

The Panel has determined that more than a small part of the applicant’s defined community is not identified by the applied-for string, as described below, and that it therefore does not meet the requirements for Nexus.
…
The Panel has determined that the applied-for string does not sufficiently identify some members of the applicant’s defined community, in particular transgender, intersex, and ally individuals

As I explained a year ago, when the first CPE panel flunked the applicant for exactly the same reason, dotgay’s proposed community included lots of people who would not necessarily describe themselves as “gay”.
You, possibly, for example.
If you’re an “ally” of gay people, by for example supporting equal rights, then you would qualify as “gay” under dotgay’s definition.
If you’re transgender or intersex, you would similarly captured by this definition. The panel said:

Despite the applicant’s assertions to the contrary, its own evidence here shows that “gay” is most commonly used to refer to both men and women who identify as homosexual, and not necessarily to others. The applicant’s “umbrella term” argument does not accurately describe, for example, the many similar transgender stories in the mass media where “gay” is not used to identify the subject. In these cases, “transgender” is used because “gay” does not identify those individuals.

The panel concluded that .gay “does not identify or match” the target community, and scored it zero.
dotgay had a second roll of the dice because the first CPE panel was found to have committed a process error by not sufficiently verifying the company’s many dozens of letters of support from gay advocacy organizations.
However, this error did not relate to the Nexus criteria, so a victory was always going to be a long shot.
The .gay gTLD is now heading to auction, where Minds + Machines, Rightside and Top Level Design are the other bidders.
You can read the new decision in PDF format here.

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Comments (1)

  1. Greg Shatan says:
    October 9, 2015 at 9:49 pm

    I hope the CPE Panel is never put in charge of a Gay Pride Parade.

    Reply

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