There are several ways you can participate in future WHOIS related policy development.
You can comment on any active issue, including WHOIS issues, being considered by the community or by ICANN. Comments may be shared verbally or in writing during public forums at ICANN public meetings, or in writing via ICANN’s public comment platform.
The Public Comments page lists every issue that is currently open for input from any Internet user around the world. You can also find a list of upcoming issues that will be available for comment in the near future, and a list of issues for which the Public Comment period has recently closed.
All comments will be read or heard and seriously considered by the ICANN community and staff.
You can volunteer to serve on a Working Group to address policies and other issues facing the Internet community and its stakeholders. These groups are made up of interested community volunteers with various types of interest and expertise.
To know when an ICANN Supporting Organization or Advisory Committee is calling for volunteers to form a Working Group or Drafting Team, watch the Announcements page on ICANN’s web site (these also show up on the ICANN.org home page). Finally, you can also learn of groups forming by reading about them in the monthly Policy Update. Sometimes it may be possible to join a group already in progress, but doing so would require you to catch up with the work, research, and discussion the group has already covered. Your best opportunity is to join a group as it is forming.
In general, anyone can join a Working Group or Drafting Team within ICANN’s At-Large Community or Generic Names Supporting Organization. Current GNSO Working Groups and At-Large Community Working Groups are kept up-to-date online so you can follow current activities. Other structures, like the Address Supporting Organization, the Country Code Names Supporting Organization, the Root Server System Advisory Committee and the Security and Stability Advisory Committee, may require you to be a member or have particular technical expertise.
For more information on active WHOIS Working Groups see here.
If you don’t have time to participate in a Working Group but want to follow the discussion, you can read the mailing list archive for the latest dialogue and deliberation of policy topics and activity. Many are publicly accessible online. Some lists permit only Working Group members to read or actively contribute, so that their deliberations are not interrupted by comments that might be uninformed or off-topic.
Mailing lists are organized online by ICANN structure. Each ICANN organization has its own set of mailing lists that show all the emails previously written to and from people working on that topic:
For a full immersion into the ICANN community, you can join thousands in the community three times a year at meetings worldwide. Attending an ICANN Public Meeting in person or via remote participation is a great way to collaborate on the latest issues, policy development, and operations of ICANN.