First draft of the European Template for IP number requests

My first reaction is that I don't really like this too much
I'm afraid.

I think splitting the field and the explanation for a field is a
bad idea.  I know the idea was to have a pan-European form, and
then have the information required to fill it in in the local
language as a separate part, but looking at it, I think this
is just going to be confusing to people and generate more work
dealing with enquiries over the phone.

I think it's better to merge the information about each field
with the question itself.  The information can still be
translated to the local language, and we can still make
available the more verbose documentation.  For example :

Part A

The information supplied for this section ... etc etc

1. Please give the suggested name of the network, a short description
   of the organisation and location, the ISO 3166 code for the country
   in which the network is located, the administrative and technical
   contact names for the network, and the author and date of
   completion of the template.

   netname:
   descr:
    .
    .
   source: RIPE


This would also mean we could send out less paperwork (save the trees!
save the fax machines!) initially.  We can add a sentence at the top
of the form asking that if the recipient needs more information on
completing the form, documents x y and z are available from the
local registry.  We can then send them the more detailed information
about each field.

Part C is a nice feature, we've had quite a few applications on
behalf of other organisations.  It might be nice to have a question
asking where notification of the allocation should go - to the
end organisation or the intermediary, this seems to vary for some
reason.

Part D is good - is it worth stating on the form that class B
addresses are only allocated in very exceptional circumstances ?
I've started adding this to forms I send out direct, and I think
it's helping to make peoplet think more carefully about their
networks.

Dunc