Ripe change to whois

Hi,

 Michael van Elst <mlelstv at xlink.net> writes:
 * 
 * I'm not sure what needs to be 'rectified'. But if you silently change
 * the semantics of a public database more than a year after a discussion
 * that wasn't attended by its current users, then you shouldn't wonder
 * about complaints.

Well, Hank is hardly a new user.
And yes, we took too long to deploy this feature, however, I can't see that 
the issues would have been different a year ago (maybe I am wrong).

I am not having an exercise on defending against changing this.
I am more than glad to make changes if the community asks for them (and to 
propose new ones that we think make sense).

I want to see what the rest of the people think since the previous consensus 
was different to what I am seeing now.

 * 
 * But complaining alone doesn't achieve anything. As it appears
 * the database lacks the feature of an exact-match query and I
 * kindly propose to add such a feature.
 * 

Well the purpose of the design is to give the user information about the 
parent domain if a certain domain is missing. That's also how the rest of the 
lookups in the RIPE DB work and is also what you do when looking in the DNS 
for contact info for a domain and you can't find it.

May be people now see the need for an exact matching option (there is already 
one to disable referral: -R). However if you make this the default behaviour 
then the purpose of the referral mechanism is defeated.

Joao

 * 
 * Regards,
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 * i.A. Michael van Elst                /          phone: +49 721 6635 330
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