[anti-abuse-wg] 2011-06 Discussion Period extended until 7 May 2012 (Abuse Contact Management in the RIPE NCC Database)

Hi Leo

If you remember back to an earlier RIPE Meeting (some time ago) three
policies were proposed including where to put the abuse data and how to
validate it. These were withdrawn to allow a Task Force to look at the
issues. The first policy from the Task Force is to have a single
location in the RIPE Database to store abuse contact details.

You can debate which should come first, a place to store the details or
a means of validating/enforcing accuracy of the data. But what you have
right now in the RIPE Database for abuse contacts is a mess. Many
details are still stored in remarks. When we wrote the Abuse Finder tool
we could not even find these contacts by scripting. The best we could
offer is a pointer to where you might find something useful.

If you can't reliably find the data you have little chance of validating
it. The whole point of this proposal is to fix the abuse contact details
in one easy to find place in the database, by humans and scripting. Far
from putting off the day when the mess has to be cleared up, this is the
first step in cleaning up the already existing mess.

Regards,
Denis Walker
Business Analyst
RIPE NCC Database Group

On 16/04/12:17 9:13 PM, Leo Vegoda wrote:
> Hi Frank,
> 
> Frank wrote:
>> Leo Vegoda wrote:
>>> Marco Schmidt wrote:
> 
> [...]
> 
>>> It is disappointing that this new proposal is still focused on a one-time 
>>> process of adding additional contact information and does not address 
>>> ongoing management of the published information. Until there is a policy 
>>> requiring contact information to be regularly maintained, proposal 
>>> 2011-06 is of limited value.
>>>  
>> Not at all, its good to seperate definitions and other procedures like
>> management or validation of abuse contacts, if you remember how hard
>> it is to achive consensus.
>>
>> Lets starts simple and lets add other parts later.
>>
>> I will be happy to prepare a validation draft, if the community
>> wants it.
> 
> My issue is mainly with the way the proposals are ordered. Creating new requirements for types of contact data to be published before agreeing on a contact data management policy risks creating a situation where a new layer of contact information of questionable quality is added as a one-time only event. Unless you have a pre-existing contact data management policy you are just making the problem bigger and putting off the day when the mess has to be cleared up.
> 
> Agreeing a way to manage contact data should be a prerequisite to the creation of new contact types.
> 
> Regards,
> 
> Leo Vegoda
> 
>