[db-wg] Cosmetic changes to the RIPE Database

Colleagues

There have been a number of cosmetic changes to the RIPE Database in
recent months. There is no agreed procedure for making these type of
changes. In particular the extent to which the community is informed.
Examples of the type of changes we are talking about are:
1/ When the ORGANISATION object addresses were synced with the
internal registry the address lines were entered in the wrong order.
The RIPE NCC did a cosmetic update to reverse the order of the address
lines. It had no operational impact at all.
2/ Capitalisation of status values. Again this had no operational impact at all.

We would like some feedback from the community about how you want
these type of cosmetic changes announced. We see four possible
options:

1/ individual notification in advance to all affected maintainers plus
general announcement on the mailing list plus update notifications
(full disclosure)
2/ general announcement on the mailing list plus update notifications
3/ general announcement on mailing list and silent update (no notifications)
4/ no announcement, no notifications, just do it without disturbing
anyone (totally silent)

Some points to note:
-In all cases the object history will show the changes.
-There is also an option to not change the "last-modified:" attribute
if you don't want that to reflect cosmetic changes.
-The full disclosure option (1) can sometimes lead to considerable
extra work load for the RIPE NCC. If people are individually told in
advance of a change they don't always realise it has no operational
impact and ask questions. Every question opens a ticket that needs to
be manually addressed.
-Perhaps options 2 or 3 are the most practical?

Your feedback is welcomed...

cheers
denis
co-chair DB-WG