[db-wg] RIPE abuse finder

On 06.03.2013, at 13:15 , Gert Doering <gert at space.net> wrote:

> Hi,
> 
> On Wed, Mar 06, 2013 at 01:05:36PM +0100, Daniel Karrenberg wrote:
>> We have agreed on a policy to provide mandatory abuse contact
>> information in the long run. In the meantime we should provide the
>> best information we can. Now if someone can *maintain* this information
>> it serves a purpose to notify *this maintainer* of abuse in the
>> absence of better data in the registry. Of course the intended
>> result is that they  *maintain* the registry data *add* abuse contact
>> information.
> 
> This seems to be the fundamental misunderstanding.  Person: objects have
> a maintainer because it was added some time in the past, and not changed
> (since nobody stepped forward and said "I want to take over that person:
> object and put my maintainer on it").
> 
> This has nothing to do whatsoever with maintaining the address space that
> happens to reference this person object.
> 
> Following this particular chain is just causing work for unrelated people 
> - and yes, our consequence to this approach by the RIPE NCC is to remove 
> our mnt-by: from person: objects that cause misdirected abuse reports, 
> leaving them unmaintained.  Congrats on great incentives for LIRs to 
> improve DB quality.

There is no misunderstanding here at all. If you remove a maintainer this just exposes the fact that indeed you do no longer consider yourself responsible for maintaining these person objects. If no-one else puts on their maintainer and assumes responsibility the object is just unmaintained. But as long as a mnt-by: exists the assumption has to be that the maintainer is indeed responsible to maintain the data and indeed also for maintaining abuse contact information. Note well that the mnt-by: attribute gives the maintainer the authority to make changes.

What value a user attaches to any unmaintained information in the database is another question. Whether the community considers it valuable to keep unmaintained data in the database is another. And finally whether there should be a requirement to have at least one maintainer for all objects that comprise the RIPE Internet Number Resource Registry is a third question.

But I see no harm in exposing the fact that no-one considers themselves responsible for maintaining certain objects.

And this has nothing to do with pointed-hairedness at all. As a community we cannot avoid responsibility to maintain data in the registry and expect a high quality registry at the same time. We have to face this, put in the required effort and evolve the registry and its rules. Otherwise we will end up with a useless heap of data.

Daniel